Chad government provides tractor tilling service to small holders

The government of Chad has acquired 900 tractors to plow a projected 450,000 hectares of land for small holder farmers across the country.

It is hoped that 900,000 tonnes of grain will result from the government mechanization programme. At an average of two hectares per tonne this is low by world standards, but is up to five times more than what smallholders working the land manually and without other inputs typically harvest per hectare.

It is hoped the fees paid for the service by farmers will be enough to keep the programme going. But as elsewhere where communal farm machine tools have been tried, needed maintenance is not always readily available when needed.

full article...IPS

UN grant to help rural farmers in Chad

The United Nations agency tasked with trying to alleviate rural poverty has announced a $17.4 million loan and grant agreement aimed at helping some 132,000 poor people in southern Chad.

Under the agreement, the Chadian Government and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) will work with the European Union, the UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) and the World Food Programme (WFP) to improve access to safe water, help manage chronic food security problems, improve access to financial services and rehabilitate rural roads to link producers to markets in the administrative region of Guéra in southern Chad.

Chad is one of the world’s poorest countries with about 80 per cent of the population depending on farming or herding for subsistence, the agency said.

Under the agreement, Chad will receive an $8.95 million loan and a grant of $8.45 million. With this new programme, IFAD will have financed seven projects in Chad for a total investment of $91 million.

UN News Center

Shrinking Lake Chad turning farmland into desert

by Isha Sesay

From droughts causing bad harvests, to floods destroying farms and homes, life in Africa's Sahel belt can be a constant struggle.

The arid belt of land stretches from Senegal in the west, all the way across the continent to Ethiopia in the east. With the Sahara to the north, and the savannah to the south, it's a region that experiences extreme dry and wet seasons.

In the middle of it all is Lake Chad, the most reliable resource in this region of shifting extremes. More than 20 million people depend on the freshwater lake for their survival. But it's been shrinking over the past 50 years and satellite images show it is now just a twentieth of its former size.

Huge expanses of water are now nothing more than a series of ponds and islands, and the once-fertile land that surrounds the lake is now dusty and barren.

"If there are solutions we must find them," said Farid Dembell, from the Society for the Development of Lake Region. "The lake is in the process of disappearing and the lake feeds many people, not just here but in other countries like Nigeria, Cameroon and Niger," he continued. "They are all people who live on Lake Chad."

The way of life in this area stretches back centuries and many earn a living fishing in the lake.

Locals report that they are catching less fish and the ones that they do catch are smaller than they used to be.

A declining stock could have devastating consequences far beyond the water's edge, says Yakowra Mallom, from UNICEF.

"At the start we didn't know anything about the problem of malnutrition," she said. "But now the figures are enormous. The children are all malnourished. There are no more fish. There's no more milk, no maize, no vegetables or cereal."

Local communities say the changing weather is the biggest reason for the shrinking of the lakes shores. The necessary irrigation of farming land has also been a factor.

But some people are making efforts to save their livelihoods.

A small local group is trying to save the surrounding land by planting trees in the villages that have been worst affected by desertification. If they cannot bring back the lake, they hope there will at least be workable land.

Saleh Sagoubi heads up the Tree Planting Association, a volunteer organization that has around 50 young members.

"I was born here and I grew up here," he said. "I want the lake to come back, not just for me, but for the children of the future."

Sagoubi blames climate change for turning much of the once-fertile land of the Sahel into desert. His group is trying to hold back the Sahara with a "great green wall" of drought-resistant trees.

"To stop the Sahara we must make lots of effort day and night -- we must work," he said.

"The desert will be stopped one day by trees; they are our weapons of mass destruction."

CNN

Lake Chad drying up

by Paul Virgo

Lake Chad was bigger than Israel less than 50 years ago. Today its surface area is les than a tenth of its earlier size, amid forecasts the lake could disappear altogether within 20 years.

Climate change and overuse have put one of Africa's mightiest lakes in mortal danger, and the livelihoods of the 30 million people who depend on its waters is hanging by a thread as a result.

An unprecedented crisis is looming that would create fresh hunger in a region already suffering grave food insecurity, and pose a massive threat to peace and stability, experts say.

"If Lake Chad dries up, 30 million people will have no means of a livelihood, and that is a big security problem because of growing competition for smaller quantities of water," says Dr Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, executive secretary of the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC).

"Poverty and hunger will increase. When there is no food to eat, there is bound to be violence."

The lake, which shrank 90 percent between 1963 and 2001 from 25,000 square kilometres to under 1,500, is bordered by Chad, Niger, Cameroon and Nigeria.

Four more countries, the Central African Republic, Algeria, Sudan and Libya, share the lake's hydrological basin and are therefore affected by its fortunes.

"Lake Chad has experienced shrinkage," Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi said at November's World Food Security Summit at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Rome. "If it dries up, it will be a real disaster. I want to warn the world about this imminent disaster."

That disaster has already started. Villages that used to be thriving lakeside ports are now stranded miles from the water, and have been swallowed by the advancing Sahara desert. Fishers and farmers are struggling to survive.

"The dramatic situation is already taking place," says Maher Salman, a technical officer with FAO's land and water division. "It's clear that the consequences have started. There is outward migration. People are looking for water, so they leave the basin area."

Fishers have seen once massive catches frequently reduced to half-filled buckets. The FAO says the lake's fish production has fallen 60 percent, and the variety of fish caught has dramatically declined too.

Farmers who rely on lake waters for irrigation are having to move nearer to the water or abandon their activities. Lack of water has caused pasture lands to shrivel up and led to a serious shortage of animal feed, estimated at 46.5 percent in some areas in 2006, resulting in cattle deaths and plummeting livestock production.

This is the sort of situation former World Bank vice-president Ismail Serageldin was worried about in 1995 when he said that "the wars of the 20th century were fought over oil, and the wars of the next century will be about water" – a view echoed in reports by several organisations including the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

While some experts remain sceptical about the prospect of all-out wars being fought over water, there have been numerous reports of clashes between farmers and herds-people competing for productive land in the Lake Chad area.

Biodiversity too has been hit by the lake's retreat. So has the region's health situation.

"Due to the movement of people looking for food there is a high level of interaction, which complicates matters because of the high prevalence of HIV among Lake Chad inhabitants," says Ganduje. "The African Development Bank has come to our aid, and we are tackling this."

Little can be done at the regional level about climate change, which is attacking the lake on two fronts - reducing the rainfall that feeds it, and accelerating evaporation of its waters due to higher temperatures. Its shallowness for such a major water body makes it particularly vulnerable to these attacks.

It is a grim situation, but not a hopeless one. The other half of the problem, over-extraction, can be tackled locally.

"We are optimistic," says Ganduje. "We are regulating the use of Lake Chad water. We are drawing up a charter so everyone has common rules and regulations in the use of water.

"We are also controlling activities on the tributaries to Lake Chad, such as the construction of dams and irrigation activities. We are controlling human behaviour in response to other factors that are outside of our control."

This confidence is justified in part by growing understanding of the need for a response.

"There is recognition of the need for new management strategies to be put into place," says Salman. "The most common conclusion of studies on the lake's shrinkage is that it is due to both human pressure on water resources and on climate change. A solution should be possible.

"There needs to be optimum use of the waters in each sector, up-scaling water conservation and small-scale agricultural technologies for more efficient irrigation. Awareness about use of the waters is important as well, so people cut down."

The LCBC also has high hopes of an ambitious plan to replenish the lake to its 1960s levels by diverting water from the Oubangui River, which is the major tributary to the Congo River.

"The feasibility study has started and a fund has been set up," says Ganduje. "The heads of state are confident of progress. If the feasibility study is positive, we believe we have the political support required."

The FAO says it does not have a position on whether the transfer project should go ahead, although it has called for very careful consideration of its impact, including that on the Congo River system. What it views as key is the presentation of concrete plans to save the lake, so donors can be badgered into committing to a cause that is crucial to millions of people .

"There is a strategic action plan for the sustainable development of Lake Chad, but to translate that into action we need an investment plan," says Salman. "We need more meetings of donors to get them to commit and make good those commitments through investment. The good news is that there is a consensus on the need for action."

IPS

Suggestion made for unviable Indian farmers to be sent to Africa

Sikh men with turbans can be seen driving around in Indian tractors on farms in the West African state of Chad, says Ravi Kumar, the honorary Consul-General for India in the country.



Kumar was reacting to a call from the audience during a discussion on Africa at the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas meet for India to consider sending farmers to Africa to share their skills.
“We are finding increasing suicides amongst our farmers because they cannot make ends meet,” M.V. Sreenivas Reddy said during question time.


“Why does India not get African governments to buy up land that our farmers with their skills and experience can help develop agriculturally and then export these products to countries where there is demand? We would not only find (Indian) farmers being gainfully employed, but could also wipe out the endemic suicides.”


Kumar said the experimental contract cultivation project in Chad was aimed at producing cassava, rice and maize crops. There were also attempts to get a similar project going in neighbouring Cameroon.


The guest of honour at the session, South African Provincial Sports Minister Amichand Rajbansi, said the suggestion would have repercussion in countries where land restitution remained major obstacles to overcome.


Thaindian

West African cotton farmers ruined by US subsidies

Karim Ouattara, a cotton farmer in Burkina Faso, should be a happy man. His has just produced a bumper crop of the "white gold" upon which millions of West Africans depend. Six tonnes of picked and priced cotton lie heaped on his farm, ready to be sold.

But Ouattara, who for 20 years has made a living on the plantations of the region's biggest cotton producer, has yet to see his cheque. His workers remain unpaid, and for the first time he has been advised to store his crop until the processing plants, themselves struggling to break even, can afford to buy the country's record 800,000 tonnes harvest. In an unprecedented move, Sofitex, the largest of Burkina Faso's three cotton companies, has advised farmers to build a storage shed for every 50 tonnes of the latest harvest.After four consecutive years of plummeting prices on the world market, the industry that provides the backbone to West African economies is now on the brink of collapse.

Cotton provides nearly 70 per cent of Burkina Faso's cash exports, and income for more than a quarter of its 13 million people. The global cotton market has been brought to breaking point by factors known locally as "the monster with three heads": a weak dollar, low world prices and US cotton subsidies.

2007 will be crucial for the futures of 10 million West African farmers as the US re-negotiates its Farm Bill, which has attracted international condemnation. America's 25,000 cotton farmers receive subsidies totalling some $4bn, allowing them to undercut their developing competitors. The subsidies were ruled illegal by the World Trade Organisation three years ago, yet only 10 per cent have been dropped so far, and Washington still pays many times more in subsidies to these farmers than it gives in aid to Africa each year. As a result, world cotton prices are now at the lowest since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Global trade talks have also stalled since West Africa's four main cotton-producers; Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad and Benin, demanded fair trading conditions for farmers who earn barely enough to cover production costs.

Mr. Outtara is in despair, saying, "Cotton production is meant to be a way out of poverty, not a means of keeping us there." When he finally sells his crop and repays his loans, Mr Outtara expects to make a profit of just 25,000 CFA (West African francs). That is $50. He can no longer afford to pay university fees for Mariam, his 23-year-old daughter, who has dropped out of her accounting course. "I just have to hope the price will pick up. If it doesn't, it will be a catastrophe," he said.

It is a word increasingly heard around the region."The situation is criminal," François Traoré, president of the Association of African Cotton Producers, said of the American subsidies."Families who don't even know where America is are being punished by their policies. We are not their enemies. Why are they destroying us with their riches? One day, when we face the same God, how will they explain themselves?"

The Bush Administration has said it will consider increasing aid to boost African farmers' productivity, but that has been dismissed by developing nations, which would rather have a "fair playing field."

With many farmers running at a loss, most are reducing production or switching crops. For Amadou Traoré (no relation to François), this harvest will be his last. He is turning to maize, which now sells for a third of the price of cotton. "It may not sell as well, but at least you know you can feed your family," he said.

* 20 million farmers in 33 African states rely on cotton production for their living.

* The price of West African cotton has fallen every year since 2003, plummeting from 42 cents to 32 cents per kg.

* Every acre of cotton farmland in the US attracts a subsidy of $230. Economists estimate US farmers would make a loss without the subsidy.

* In 2004/2005, the amount paid out to American cotton farmers came to a total of $4.2 billion dollars. The same year, farmers in Burkina Faso produced a bumper crop of cotton more efficiently, and yet made a loss of $81 million.

The Times

US grants $27m to boost cotton production in West Africa

http://www.apanews.net/article_eng.php3?id_article=19236

The American government has granted a subsidy of $27 million dollars to increase the production, quality and the marketing of cotton in four West African countries, it was announced in January 2007.

The subsidy is intended for the four major cotton-producing countries in the sub region, Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali and Chad and is expected to be used over the next three years, a US press embassy release said.

It noted that the subsidy was a contribution towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals which aim at reducing poverty by half by 2015.