FAO official urges GM crops-wary Zambia to accept them

Zambia has consistently expressed its official opposition to GM crops, but as elsewhere in Africa, the pressure to adopt them is relentless.

FAO climate change expert Louis Bockel mainly used southern Africa's increasingly unpredictable weather patterns to argue for why it was now particularly important for countries like Zambia to take a new look at GM technology.

A few weeks before Bockel's April call, an official of Zambia's recently-elected ruling party reiterated the country's continuing misgivings about gene-modified crops.

''Farmers will have to develop new crop varieties or hybrids as a way to adapt. With climate change, you need to diversify into more resilient crops, plants that would be more water-efficient or drought-tolerant,'' the Times of Zambia reported Bockel as saying. ''During such times, you can not afford to ignore technology… you forget the myths.''

African Agriculture

Observing climate changed-linked deforestation from space

by Kristin Palitza

Global climate change can now be observed from space. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) launched a new technology that can survey the world’s forests via satellites and provide a more accurate, global picture of common threats to the environment, such as deforestation, degradation or illegal logging.

Using a remote sensing surveying technology, FAO has taken and analysed more than 13,500 high-resolution satellite images in 102 countries. These images will help nations to accurately assess the state of their forests. Monitoring change in forests has important implications for biodiversity conservation, carbon storage and human livelihoods.

The losses in forests all around the world can now be quantified for the first time, FAO announced at the U.N. 17th Conference of the Parties climate change summit, which is taking place from Nov. 28 to Dec. 9 in Durban, South Africa.

"It’s a very comprehensive study of the world’s forests. For the first time we have consistent and comparable global and regional long-term data on forest loss land use. Up until now, most available data has come in numbers, not maps (based on satellite images)," explained FAO forest monitoring scientist Adam Gerrand.

As a result, very few countries have been able to monitor the impact of climate change and human intervention on their forests consistently over time.

"We have been lacking good data on deforestation and urgently needed more details about the dynamics of forest loss. We didn’t get the whole story until now," Gerrand added.

The initial findings from the high-resolution satellite data show that the world’s total forest area shrank by an average of 14.5 million hectares per year between 1990 and 2005. It largely occurred in the tropics, likely attributable to the conversion of tropical forests to agricultural land.

"The rate of forest loss has increased from four million hectares in 1990s to six million hectares between 2000 and 2005," said Gerrand. "We are losing vital carbon storage, biodiversity and other values forests provide."

There is some good news, too, however. The survey shows that deforestation does not happen quite as fast as countries have been reporting. The new data showed a net loss of 73 million hectares between 1990 and 2005 compared to previous net loss estimate of 107 million hectares for the same time period.

During that time, the loss of forests was highest in the tropics, where just under half of the world’s forests are located, followed by Africa. Asia was the only region to show net gains in forest land-use area in both periods. Deforestation occurred here as well, but the extensive planting that has been reported by several countries in Asia, mainly China, exceeded the forest areas that were lost.

All satellite images are taken a hundred kilometres apart and comprise 10 square kilometres. They are classified, labelled and then passed on to the countries where they have been taken, so that governments can review and confirm the data.

"It’s a framework countries can use to improve forest resources," explained Gerrand.

Some countries have already benefited from the new satellite technology. In Papua New Guinea, a small country in Oceania, for example, which is to 65 percent covered with forests, 41 satellite images were taken to establish the impact climate change had on its forest cover.

"Our country didn’t have the technology to assess forest degradation. The new satellite imagery improves the credibility of data," said Dr. Joe Pokana, head of Papua New Guinea’s national climate change office. "We now plan to establish a robust national monitoring system that will help us to understand the level of degradation and inform policy."

Similarly, Angola has started to survey the threat of deforestation via the photographic maps provided by the satellites. Forests currently make up 43.4 percent of the southern African country.

"We how have important information about how our forest resources are utilised, carbon stocks, environmental problems, causes of degradation and deforestation," said Mateus Andre, the head of Angola’s forestry department. "For the first time, we have quality information on which we can base decisions."

The new data are particularly important for developing regions like Africa, where existing information is often out-dated or of low quality due to lack of capacity. They differ from previous FAO findings in the Global Forest Resources Assessment of 2010, which were based on a compilation of country reports that used a wide variety of sources.

"Deforestation is depriving millions of people of forest goods and services that are crucial to rural livelihoods, economic well-being and environmental health," said Eduardo Rojas-Briales, FAO assistant director-general for forestry. "The new, satellite-based figures give us a more consistent global picture. Together with the broad range of information supplied by the country reports, they offer decision- makers at every level more accurate information."

Further remote sensing studies are expected to reveal changes occurring since 2005. "Eventually we will be able to assign biomass to each site for the estimation of forest carbon emissions," explained Frederic Achard, a scientist from the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission who helped to develop the new imaging system.

Until then lies a long way ahead. Currently, the satellite technology can provide some important data, but not all. Admitted Gerrand: "We still have several decades worth of development ahead."

IPS

Cassava virus on verge of epidemic in East Africa

A new variant of a cassava disease is affecting large parts of East Africa, especially in the area's Great Lakes Region, putting a crucial source of food and income at risk, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

FAO experts say Cassava Brown Streak Disease (CBSD) is on the verge of becoming an epidemic, and have called for an urgent increase in funding, research, training, surveillance and other measures to help farmers and breeders.

The appearance of the disease in previously unaffected areas, and the lack of continued funding for research and development work to address CBSD in the region, have added to the threat already presented by Cassava Mosaic Disease (CMD).

In Rwanda, a surveillance analysis conducted by the National Agricultural Research Institute in 2010 showed a 15.7 percent rate of infection on local varieties and 36.9 percent in improved varieties.

"None of the cassava varieties currently being distributed to farmers seem to be tolerant to the effects of CBSD. We urgently need to get information on the extent and severity of the outbreak, and to support investments to identify disease-tolerant varieties and coping strategies for farmers," said Jan Helsen, leader of FAO's European Union-funded Regional Cassava Initiative in Eastern and Central Africa.

One of the challenges facing those who are trying to stem the spread of CBSD is timely detection of the disease.

"The disease manifests itself in different ways depending on local conditions. In some cases it shows symptoms only on the roots. An apparently healthy plant may be found to have spoiled roots only when harvested, with obvious consequences for food security," Helsen explained.

Cassava can account for as much as a third of the total calorie intake for people in countries such as Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda or DRC.

"Thanks to the foresight of, and the scientific support from, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), efforts are underway to understand the epidemiology of the disease, but more support will be needed for this work, and to select and bring on CBSD-tolerant varieties," Helsen added.

Short-term measures needed to tackle CBSD include stepping up disease surveillance and conducting regular inspections; increasing the sensitization of communities to the threat of CBSD; and using hands-on training for farmers, like FAO's farmer field schools, to introduce community-based practices to prevent the introduction or spread of the disease, such as the removal of infected plants.

Recommended measures also include banning the distribution of infected plants between districts and zones, and, in the event of infection, using coping strategies such as the early harvest of cassava, before symptoms appear and significant damage can be done.

Since around 2006, FAO and the Catholic Relief Services (CRS) have implemented two regional cassava projects, funded respectively by the European Union and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to support vulnerable farmers affected first by CMD and now by CBSD. The projects have provided access to clean, or virus-free, planting material. The projects aim to develop capacity in disease preparedness and strengthen the resilience of farmers to outbreaks of both diseases.




"Fortunately, there are now eight varieties under development by IITA and its national partners in the region which are resistant to Cassava Mosaic Disease and which show some level of tolerance to CBSD. Under existing programme arrangements, these varieties could be made widely available in the next 18-24 months, assuming that resources can be identified to support multiplication and distribution activities," said Helsen.

Helsen says National Cassava Steering Committees have been set up to manage the response to the disease, but they need more time and funds to ensure that some of the CBSD-tolerant varieties in the pipeline can be multiplied and made available across the region.

More extensive surveillance will be carried out in Rwanda again this year, along with Burundi and the DRC, which will give a more complete picture of the occurrence and spread of the disease. To help raise awareness of the impact of the disease, FAO and CRS are currently undertaking a rapid survey on the impact of CBSD on household food security across the region.

FAO

Brazil's Graziano elected chief of Food and Agriculture Organization

by Nicole Winfield

Brazil's one-time food security minister, Jose Graziano da Silva, was elected Sunday director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization, the U.N. agency tasked with reducing world hunger at a time of near-record high food prices.

Graziano, currently FAO's regional representative for Latin America and the Caribbean, won on the second ballot in a 92-88 vote of the 180 member states voting.

He beat out Miguel Angel Moratinos of Spain, his main challenger, and four other candidates to replace Jacques Diouf of Senegal, whose 18-year tenure prompted a change in the agency's rules to set term limits.
Graziano takes over the agency at a time when high food prices are putting the lives of millions of already hungry and malnourished people at further risk and raising fears of a repeat of the high-price-driven social unrest of 2007-2008.
The FAO's food price index hit an all-time high in February. It has since decreased slightly, but experts warn that food prices remain far too high for many poor communities. The agency put the number of hungry people in 2010 at 925 million, the overwhelming majority living in developing countries.

The Rome-based FAO is the largest U.N. agency, with an annual budget of about $1 billion. It has faced long-standing calls from top donors like the U.S. for bureaucratic reform, budget cuts and better prioritizing of projects.

In his final campaign pitch to delegates Saturday, Graziano noted that no Brazilian heads a top-level position in the U.N. system and that no Latin American had ever headed the FAO. He said he had the credentials, citing his tenure as FAO's regional representative for Latin America and the Caribbean since 2006.

Prior to that, he served as food security minister under former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. In that capacity, he helped implement the "Zero Hunger" initiative that helped dramatically decrease malnutrition among Brazil's 190 million people.

In his acceptance speech, Graziano said that while he was Brazil's candidate going into the election, he was now "a director-general elected by all the countries."

He drew particular applause in thanking African and other developing nations that saw in him a candidate who favored "south-south cooperation," a reference to the common issue in U.N. bodies about the north-south divide between industrialized and developing countries.

In his final campaign speech Saturday, Graziano promised to deliver on FAO's reform plans and said Africa should remain a priority for the agency, with FAO playing a central role in water and marine resources management.

But Graziano's emphasis was mostly on the need for a shared vision and bridging gaps between different positions to improve the organization's decision-making — saying the consensus surrounding his candidacy shows he's the right man to bridge those gaps.

True to this notion, he ended his pitch quoting John Lennon: "A dream you dream alone is only a dream; a dream you dream together is reality."

Businessweek

Rinderpest livestock virus has been wiped out, scientists say

by Pallab Ghosh

Scientists working for the UN say that they have eradicated a virus which can be deadly to cattle.

If confirmed, rinderpest would become only the second viral disease - after smallpox - to have been eliminated by humans.

Rinderpest was once prevalent in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has said that it will now suspend its efforts to track and eliminate the virus. The FAO said it was "confident" the virus has been eradicated from those parts of the world where it is prevalent.

When the disease arrived in Africa at the end of the nineteenth century between 80% and 90% of cattle and buffalo on the continent were killed.

The eradication of the virus has been described as the biggest achievement in veterinary history and one which will save the lives and livelihoods of millions of the poorest people in the world.

Dr John Anderson from the Institute for Animal Health (IAH) at Pirbright, UK, who has been involved with the eradication programme, said: "For too long people have been involved in controlling diseases and not actually dreaming that it is possible to eradicate a disease from the world. And with Rinderpest we did."

The latest FAO progress report on the rinderpest eradication programme said: "As of mid 2010, FAO is confident that the rinderpest virus has been eliminated from Europe, Asia, Middle East, Arabian Peninsula, and Africa."

These are the regions afflicted by the viral disease in the recent past.

A formal announcement on the eradication of rinderpest is expected to be made by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) next year.

Dr Anderson and his colleagues at the IAH helped develop a simple way to test cattle to see if they had the disease. The test, which was developed with the support of the UK's Department for International Development, was designed to be used by local people in the field and to give reliable results within minutes. It proved highly effective and the technology has been rolled out across Africa. This was particularly important in the later stages of the programme when pockets of the virus remained in war-torn areas of southern Sudan and Somalia.

Dr Mike Baron of the IAH said that it had been too dangerous for outsiders to enter those areas. Experts, he said, would train locals - so called 'barefoot vets' - to recognise the disease and administer vaccines. They would work with nomadic tribesmen in the regions and vaccinate herds "on the move."

Rinderpest is one of the most lethal cattle diseases known to science. Typically, seven out of 10 cattle infected with the disease would die. But in the 1960s, veterinary scientist Walter Plowright developed a workable vaccine, allowing the disease to be brought under control.

But to begin with there was little to no co-ordination. Individual countries and groups of countries would attempt to vaccinate cattle, suppressing the disease for a while. But it would then re-appear.

Progress was only made once large unified projects were established to tackle the disease.

"It's an enormously important achievement because it highlights what can be done by people working together," Dr Baron said.

"It has also taken a disease which has been a huge threat to the livelihood of people and removed it."

BBC

Small grains being promoted in Zimbabwe

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) launched a project in Zimbabwe recently to promote the use of small grains such as millet and sorghum to boost food security in three drought-prone provinces - Matabeleland North, Matabeleland South and Masvingo.

Small grains are considered drought tolerant and have better nutritional value than maize, which is viewed as an unsuitable crop in these provinces.

The US$399,000 project - Promoting Production, Processing and Marketing of Small Grains in the Marginal Areas in Zimbabwe - which envisages the provision of improved seed varieties, will target small farmers, and aims to be up and running by the rainy season starting in the next few weeks.

It will provide small grain inputs sufficient for the cultivation of half a hectare, and this will also enable farmers to produce seeds for the next planting season.

Gaoju Han, FAO's sub-regional director for Southern Africa and Zimbabwe's country representative, said: "The project will also build the capacity of community based smallholder seed producers so as to ensure sustainable availability of high quality small grains seed."

Ministry of Agriculture extension workers will provide assistance and training on the production of small grains, and inform communal farmers of their benefits.


Han said production of small grains over the years had faced several obstacles, including the limited access to seed, poor prices, low yields and the huge flocks of voracious red-billed quelea birds.

"These challenges have contributed towards the reduction in the area allocated to small grains on the one hand, and an expansion of the maize area on the other. FAO’s aim is to assist the Ministry of Agriculture to address these and other challenges that have limited the production of small grains by smallholder farmers," he said.

"What is now required is for the key players to exploit the unique attributes of small grains such as drought tolerance and their better nutritional value compared to other cereal crops," said Ngoni Masoka, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture.

Food security expert and the former Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union president Davidson Mugabe said the launch was welcome and if properly conducted, would go a long way towards ensuring food security.


"We need as a country to come up with policies that ensure that we grow crops which are suitable to the different regions, and the three provinces for the programme are ideal for small grains because they record low annual rainfall," he said.

Zimbabwe's rapid decline from food security has been blamed on a combination of events - including droughts and the disruption of agriculture in 2000, when President Robert Mugabe launched the fast-track land reform programme, which redistributed more than 4,000 white commercial farms to landless blacks.

In the first quarter of 2009 about seven million people - more than half the population - depended on food assistance. The government estimates about 1.3 million people will require food assistance in the first quarter of 2011.


Davidson Mugabe said it was also important to popularize the consumption of small grains and there was a "need for innovation when processing food from small grains. Only recently I ate a cake made from millet."

Dumisani Nyoni, the provincial agricultural officer for Matabeleland North, said farmers’ yields in the province had in recent years been declining.

"The farmers would save some [small] grain [seed] from their harvest which they continued to use as seed and over the years yields had gone down. When we introduce new seed varieties to the farmers, their produce will be higher. One challenge though that needs to be tackled urgently will be the threat posed by quelea birds which are a problem in the province. The department of national parks [needs] to be capacitated in order to eliminate that menace."

Quelea birds, which roam in flocks that can grow to millions, prefer the seeds of wild grasses to those of cultivated crops, but their numbers make them a constant threat to fields of sorghum, wheat, barley, millet and rice.


IRIN

FAO warns against jatropha 'hyped claims and half-truths'

In a significant implication for the country’s biofuel policy, a specialised arm of the United Nations has warned that the developing countries should not buy blindly into the ‘jatropha for biodiesel’ argument. Warning against the hype and half-truths around jatropha curacas, an oil seed plant touted as a major potential source of biofuels, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation has warned in a special report that yields need to improve significantly for the crop to give an adequate return.

“Although there have been increasing investments and policy decisions concerning the use of jatropha as an oil crop, they have been based on little evidence-based information,” the report said, adding that identifying the true potential of jatropha requires separating the evidence from the hyped claims and half-truths.”

The report comes two weeks after two researchers at Belgium’s University of Leuven said that the crop requires more water than had been thought, and was best suited for small-scale farming in remote areas, where alternative fuel supplies are erratic and expensive.

The cautioning report is also a pointer to several giant corporate houses worldwide such as GM that have invested in the crop. US automobile giant GM was one of the companies that invested in jatropha following a surge of interest five years ago in the potential for biofuels.

In April, it announced a five-year programme with the US Department of Energy and India’s Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute to demonstrate the oilseed’s commercial potential. A good chunk of India’s biofuel programme rests on the success of jatropha as a green diesel alternative, but the FAO report has said that it is unrealistic to expect jatropha to substitute oil imports significantly in the developing countries where it is grown.

The FAO has also punctured the argument that growing jatropha utilizes marginal lands effectively. The level of economic returns needed to secure private sector investment “may not be attainable on degraded land”, FAO said, noting considerably better gross margins which can be gained on sugar cane and oil palm plantations. The UN organisation, however, does not rule out the oilseed completely, but has flagged an urgent need to multiply the yields.

The FAO acknowledged that while there was limited information available on private sector work in jatropha, “it may be assumed that advances have been made”. Interestingly, recently shareholders of D1 Oils, the loss-making, London-listed jatropha specialist, foiled a coup by activist investor Brian Myerson, who last year lost an attempt to switch the group’s resources to producing cane ethanol.

FAO

Cattle rinderpest disease now a thing of the past, declares FAO

by Paul Virgo

An animal 'black death' that has devastated livestock around the world for thousands of years, causing famine and untold human misery, is about to be permanently consigned to the history books.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is confident that rinderpest is beaten after being at the centre of efforts to wipe out a disease that had seemed unstoppable for much of the 20th century and it expects the official declaration of its extinction to arrive next year.

Rinderpest is a virus affecting cattle, buffalo, yaks and hoofed wild animals that spreads through contact and contaminated materials and has death rates during outbreaks of up to 100 percent.

Although humans cannot contract the fast-spreading disease, also known as cattle plague, its effects on sources of food and income mean it has frequently been as lethal for people as for animals.

"I'd say this feat is comparable to the eradication of smallpox in humans," said Juan Lubroth, FAO's chief veterinary officer. "It's only the second time a pathogen has been removed from the face of the earth by human efforts (after the eradication of smallpox was declared in 1980). It was a devastating problem. Infected animals die a very miserable death within seven days. If you have a herd of 100 animals or of 1,000 animals, they'll all be dead. Millions and million of wildlife and cattle died in short periods of time… This is a disease that has been an absolute scourge in agriculture for millennia."

The Rome-based FAO says outbreaks of rinderpest were documented in ancient Roman times and food shortages created by recurring epidemics in the 18th century contributed to the unrest that led to the French Revolution in 1789.

The disease peaked in the 1920s, when it extended from Scandinavia to Africa and the Philippines in Asia, with outbreaks in Brazil and Australia too.

Despite the development of a powerful vaccine, epidemics still hit South Asia, the Middle East and Africa in the 1980s.

"In Nigeria in 1983 and 1985-86, they lost more than half a million head of cattle, with losses of almost three billion U.S. dollars," said Dr. Walter N. Masiga, the former director of the African Union's Inter-African Bureau for Animal Resources (IBAR).

"From that one example you can see the impact. Many Africans live off livestock. Their livestock is a mobile bank (as it is their main asset), it is their food and it is their revenue. When you remove livestock from some pastoral groups in Africa, you kill them."

The problem was that, while some countries carried out effective vaccination programmes, the disease survived in pockets in others and was able to break out again from them with devastating consequences.

In response, the FAO launched the Global Rinderpest Eradication Programme in 1994 with other bodies, including IBAR and the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), to coordinate national and regional activities and forge them into a systematic global campaign against the disease.

The programme charted cattle plague's distribution, trained farmers to identify it, provided technical assistance for monitoring schemes and established emergency response plans to smother outbreaks.

Blow by blow the disease was gradually weakened up to the point that it now lies dead and buried. The last outbreak occurred in Kenya in 2001. "There is no rinderpest today in the wild," Lubroth said.

"We had set a deadline of 2010. However, there is an international system of recognition for rinderpest freedom done in partnership with the OIE, where countries that want to be recognised as being free have to submit a dossier and some countries are lagging behind in this process. But we are certainly shooting at 2011 for the declaration of its eradication."

The FAO estimates that defeating rinderpest generated as much as 289 billion dollars in revenue from additional agricultural output in India alone between 1965 and 1998, while African nations and countries such as Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Turkey have also reaped massive benefits.

"The protection of cattle in sub-Saharan Africa, the Near East and Asia has improved both food and income streams for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of pastoral people and small farmers and helped avoid famine and the loss of draught power in agricultural communities," said the FAO's Felix Njeumi.

Agriculture in developing countries still faces many threats, above all the effects of climate change.

But the FAO says that at least farmers in poorer parts of the world now have one less problem to worry about. Furthermore, the experience gained from fighting rinderpest can be used to address other dangers.

"There are other diseases that are quite problematic, and not only these trans-boundary, high-impact diseases. There are also some chronic problems such as parasitism," Lubroth said.

"These have impacts on the efficiency of production, so that an animal needs more energy to survive and the milk quality may not be the same. If we talk about poultry diseases, less eggs are laid. (These are) diseases that have impacts on food availability and food security.

"We are already using the experience from rinderpest so that we have clusters of countries working to solve a common problem. It's important - networks of laboratories, regional economic communities coming together with the international organisations to have the vision to be able to work together to progressively eliminate a pathogen."

It is also important that states live up to the pledge made at last month's U.N. Summit on Food Security to reverse the long-running decline in agricultural investment, so some of this money can be devoted to defending livestock.

"Most certainly, lack of investment is a major obstacle," Lubroth added. "For example, we still do not have a vaccine for a high-impact disease like Africa swine fever, which is a big problem in Africa and appears to be a big problem in Eastern Europe now too, with outbreaks in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Russia and it will possibly extend into other parts of Europe and Asia.

"The vaccine companies have their profit margins, so who is going to invest in an African swine fever vaccine? Over the last 20 years, I've not been able to find someone who has listened to me (about this)."

IPS

Prospects improving for African agriculture after years of decline: FAO

by Joe De Capua

After decades of decline, sub-Saharan Africa's agricultural sector grew more than three and a half percent last year. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says nearly all the growth was due to smaller farms.

The FAO calls the improvement "a break with the past" and says the outlook for the agricultural sector is "improving."

Keith Wiebe, the deputy director of the FAO's Agricultural Development Economics Division, says there are several reasons for positive performance.

"After a long period of neglect, the importance of agriculture is becoming more clear to all of us. And that is resulting in improvements in some of the supporting services and infrastructure that are the real obstacle to improved growth in Africa," he says.

A new FAO paper says the gains are "driven" by improved policies, better response to higher commodity prices and technological advances, such as drought-resistance rice.

But the U.N. agency warns that "concerted and purposeful policy action" is needed to keep the current momentum going. That includes more spending on agriculture.

"We need to think of that in very broad terms, not just in terms, for example, of fertilizer or new seed varieties…but…investments that support agriculture. And that can include roads and communications. And...things like investments in education and health that strengthen…human capital, their labor power," he says.

About 80 percent of sub-Saharan Africa's agricultural sector is made up of smallholder farms.

"Most of Africa's farmers today are smallholders. In the longer term, there's a big question as to what the structure of agriculture will look like in 2050. And this is what we've invited experts to Rome next month to talk about," he says.

The High-Level Expert Forum will bring together 300 experts from the academic, NGO and private sectors to discuss challenges to feeding the world in 2050.

Sub-Saharan Africa's population is expected to grow to nearly two billion by 2050 - up from 770 million in 2005. That will place greater demands on food production.

Wiebe says trying to predict conditions 40 years down the road will help avoid complacency once the current food and economic crises end.

"We want to seize the momentum, take advantage of the attention and the resources that are being committed to agriculture now and to make sure that those are applied in a way that addresses long-term challenges," he says.

The Rome forum will be held October 12^th and 13^th.

VOA

Weeds are farmers' natural enemy number one, says FAO expert

Weeds should be regarded as a top natural killer for farmers around the world, especially in Africa, according to an expert from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations.

More than 1 billion people nowadays in the world are hungry, the result of flawed policies, wars, natural hazards like floods, droughts, pests, diseases and climate change. But one huge hunger-maker lurks largely unnoticed, FAO's weed expert Ricardo Labrada-Romero said in the report.

"Maybe it's because weeds are not very spectacular," he said. "Droughts, insects and diseases like swine flu are attention-grabbers because their effects are dramatic. Weeds are different. They play havoc out quietly all year round, year after year."

Considering the damage caused by one weed alone, Broomrape (Orobanche spp), an aggressive root weed which attacks legumes and vegetables, it can not only lead to complete crop failure but also make fields infertile for many years, the expert pointed out. Figures clearly show that weeds should be regarded as farmers' natural enemy No. 1, Labrada-Romero said.

According to a leading environmental research organization, Land Care of New Zealand, they cause some 95 billion U.S. dollars a year in lost food production at global level, compared with 85 billion dollars for pathogens, 46 billion dollars for insects and 2.4 billion dollars for vertebrates, he said.

Economic losses may be even greater considering that more than half of the time farmers spend in the fields goes to weed control, Labrada-Romero said. If farms are to increase their productivity one of the first things they must do is to improve weed management, he added. Nowhere is this more important than in Africa, where weeds are a major cause of stagnating yields and production, Labrada-Romero stressed.

"With only manual labor available, African smallholders need to weed every day and that means a family physically can't handle more than 1-1.5 hectares," he said. "But proper management would allow them to farm more land and grow more food."

Modern integrated weed management involves much more than spraying herbicides. Crop rotation is one effective technique because weeds are often biologically adapted to a given food crop so that changing the crop can reduce weeds too.

Also important, said Labrada-Romero, is the use of certified, quality seeds. Many of the seeds produced and used by farmers are contaminated by weed seeds. If smallholders produce their own seeds, they should be taught to clean them so as to avoid planting weeds in their fields at sowing time.

After two decades fighting weeds, Labrada-Romero, a 62-year-old Cuban, recently went into well-deserved retirement, according to FAO. "But the fight against weeds must go on," the FAO expert said, "otherwise more people will starve."

Xinhua

Belgium and FAO link to help African farmers

Belgium has agreed to a $6.6 million programme for FAO to provide emergency assistance to poor farmers in Africa as part of an ongoing partnership that has totalled more than $80 million over the past twelve years.

Around $ 2.6 million of the latest contribution from the Belgian Development Cooperation will go to directly support farming households whose livelihoods have suffered from the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Cassava and sweet potatoes cuttings as well as hand tools, vegetable and other crop seeds will be distributed to 25,000 farmers. In addition, another 4,000 small farmers will receive backing to increase maize production in order to meet market demand. Producer associations will be given basic training in the use of machinery and how to repair warehouses and roads to enable harvested produce to be stored and transported away.

This part of the project will be implemented jointly with a World Food Programme “Purchase for Progress (P4P)”, also funded by Belgium. WFP supports local farmers by buying their products which is then distributed as food assistance to hungry people.

The Belgian donation to FAO will also assist returning ex-soldiers and farming households hit by floods and high food prices in neighbouring Burundi. They are to benefit from a $2 million programme that will help them return to farming. The rest of Belgium’s donation will go to support farmers in drought-stricken Niger and Ethiopia.

“Belgium is one of the most consistently supportive donors to FAO’s emergency work, something which is very much appreciated and its latest show of generous support will help improve the livelihood and food security of thousands of vulnerable people” said Laurent Thomas, Director of FAO’s Emergency Operations and Rehabilition Division.

Belgium has also recently contributed $900 000 to the FAO’s Special Fund for Emergency and Rehabilitation Activities which allows the agency to act swiftly in emergency situations. Since 1997, Belgium has financed more than 105 emergency and rehabilitation projects in over 20 disaster affected countries.

FAO

China sets up $30 million Africa food fund to be administered by FAO

China has set up a 30 million dollar trust fund to back agricultural projects, mainly in Africa, carried out by the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the UN food agency has said.

The money is aimed at helping developing countries to improve farming output with a view to achieving Millennium Development Goals, the Rome-based FAO said in a statement, adding that Beijing had joined the FAO's "donor community" with the agreement.

"This historic agreement underlines the importance of the role which China has come to play in the global arena today," said Jose Maria Sumpsi, FAO's assistant director-general.Sumpsi signed the agreement with Chinese Deputy Agriculture Minister Niu Dun.

The fund will last three years, with Beijing releasing 10 million dollars (7.4 million euros) a year.

China has provided technical assistance to Africa through the FAO for many years, formalising an alliance for south-south cooperation with the agency in 2005.

China, which has been providing bilateral aid to African nations for decades, has greatly stepped up investment in the world's poorest continent in recent years, although it has come under criticism in the West for supporting nations such as Sudan and Zimbabwe.

Many observers view Beijing's overtures to Africa as motivated mainly by China's desperate need for oil and other resources to fuel its booming economy.

AFP

Africa as entitled to subsidise farmers as EU does, says FAO head

by Mabvuto Banda

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization has challenged rich nations to stop discouraging African countries from subsidising farming as they spend billions of dollars subsidising their own farmers.

FAO Director General Jacques Diouf questioned the basis of attitudes against subsidies in Africa by the developed world when they spend more money subsidising farming in their own countries.

"In 2007 a total of $365 billion was spent on farmers who only represent 2 to 4 per cent of (the populations of) those countries and I have been asking why developing countries could not provide subsidies to their farmers who represent 60 to 80 per cent of the population?," Diouf said in Malawi. "No one has ever come up with an answer to that."

Diouf, who conferred the Agricola Medal on Malawi President Bingu wa Mutharika in late November, lauded wa Mutharika for securing food supplies in the southern African nation in the last four years of his administration.

Wa Mutharika is the sixth African to receive the award which has been awarded to people like the late Pope John Paul II.

"We are happy that during that time we are able to show that with good leadership and support of the farmers, the farmers are able to produce not only for their families and country but for export to other countries as well," he said.

He said Malawi had been able to contain food prices and had achieved economic growth despite rising food and energy prices and the negative impacts of climate change.

"Even on a global level the world has not contained the food crisis with the number of people facing food shortages rising by 75 million in 2007 instead of being reduced as agreed at the World Food Summit of 1994," he said.

Malawi, one of the poorest nations in Africa, is enjoying a modest economic boom that has been sparked by good maize harvests, economic reforms and an increase in aid from Western nations and other international donors.

In the last three years, the southern African nation has had bumper harvests due to good rains and a successful fertiliser subsidy programme. Last year the country exported 400,000 tonnes of white maize to Zimbabwe.

But the bumper yields have come at a huge cost. This year Malawi is spending 29 billion kwacha -- double the amount of last year -- to subsidise feriliser and seed for the current farming season.

Reuters

FAO to assist Swazi farmers to buy seed

Subsistence farmers in Swaziland will get help from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to buy seeds as rising prices put agricultural inputs beyond the reach of many.

Speaking at a school-based farm project outside the capital Mbabane, UN FAO director-General Jacques Diouf said the agency would give farmers vouchers to buy seeds from local producers to ensure they grow food, a UN press release said. The UN said the rising cost of staple foods such as rice, maize meal and fuel in recent months was hampering farmers' ability to buy seeds and fertilizer, jeopardizing their livelihoods and food supply.

Most of Swaziland's around 1 million people live off the land on less than a dollar a day.

Rising prices have compounded food insecurity in the country that is regularly beset by drought and where able-bodied workers are being lost in droves to HIV/AIDS.

Swaziland is one of a number of countries where the UN is trying to mitigate the effect of rising food prices.

Seed vouchers were already used during the severe drought of 2006- 07.

'We must work together to produce more food where it is urgently needed to contain the impact of soaring prices on poor consumers,' Diouf said.

Over 8 million people in seven southern African countries - Swaziland, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe - are expected to face food insecurity between now and March 2009 and require some kind of assistance.

Food insecurity was a key factor behind recent protests in Swaziland over King Mswati III's lavish birthday independence celebrations.

Many Swazis said the millions of dollars spent on the party held on September 6 would have been better spent on food or medication for HIV patients.

The Citizen

FAO distributes groundnuts, maize seeds in Central African Republic

The United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has completed one of its largest-ever seed distribution operations in the Central African Republic, (CAR), a UN news release said August 7.

The seed scheme was designed to tackle three issues: food insecurity, hunger and chronic poverty, which are problems across the CAR, according to the FAO.

The UN food agency distributed seeds to more than 12,500 farmers in Nana-Mambere prefecture in the west of the CAR, next to the border with Cameroon.

Each seed kit given to a farmer consisted of 4 kg of peanut seeds and 10 kg of corn seeds. The non-governmental organization Mercy Corps trained local communities in farming techniques so they can boost their yields and expand beyond subsistence farming.

Xinhua

FAO holds African food security meeting in Kenya

African and United Nations experts gathered in Nairobi to discuss food security as Africa reels from a global food crisis triggered by surging energy and commodity prices.

The 25th Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Regional Conference for Africa, taking place in Kenya until Friday, is to discuss ways of boosting agriculture and food security, such as by improving water management.

It opened with a meeting of technical committees, due to be followed by a ministerial conference on Thursday.

"I am confident that the results of the deliberations will provide the organisation and its partners with recommendations and necessary guidance to help boost agricultural development and food security in Africa," FAO director general Jacques Diouf said in a statement.

Diouf said small-scale farmers and poor households will be the worst hit as they rely on markets that have been rattled by rising inflationary trends.

Food prices have doubled in three years, according to the World Bank, sparking riots in many African nations and elsewhere. Brazil, Vietnam, India and Egypt have all imposed food export restrictions.

The conference chairperson, Kenyan Agriculture Minister William Ruto, also blamed sluggish agriculture for the current food crisis.

"Food and nutrition insecurity is a growing problem brought about by the slow growth of the agricultural sector," Ruto said in a statement published in newspapers.

"The insecurity is further exacerbated by the global rise in food prices brought about by the rising demand for cereals, weather-related supply shocks, high cost of energy and increased prices for fertilisers and other inputs," Ruto added.

Sub-Saharan Africa is likely to suffer particularly heavily from global food price inflation.

Inflation in Kenya, East Africa's largest economy, hit 31,5% in May, the highest in 14 years, owing to erratic rains and disruptions on the supply-chain spurred by recent political violence.

Experts say Africa's spending on cereal imports is expected to rise by more than half in 2008, with countries like Côte d'Ivoire, Senegal and Nigeria -- among the world's top rice importers -- suffering most because their import source in southeast Asia is reeling from similar problems.

The situation has been worsened by steep fuel prices that have raised transport and utility costs, they say.

Many countries, notably Kenya, have responded by slashing import duties, introducing subsidies and export bans, but experts warn that these knee-jerk reactions may be difficult to undo when food prices ease.

A FAO crisis summit early in June in Rome pledged $6,5-billion in emergency food relief and vowed to halve global hunger by 2015 by taking "urgent" action over the global food crisis.

A recent FAO report estimated that, to meet rising demand, food production must double by 2030.

Despite record production in 2008, food prices are expected to remain high, impacting on the world's poor and sparking riots in countries reliant on imports, the FAO report said.

Mail and Guardian

Conflicting agendas of Africa, USA on display at FAO food summit

Barbara Fratelli (not her real name), works as a cleaner in the imposing clean-lined modernist building that houses the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome.

I met her as she was vacuuming the red carpet ahead of the talks last week. Decisions taken here could literally prove a matter of life or death for the people Barbara left behind in Africa, when she came to work in Italy 20 years ago.

"I hope they do something this time," she said. "They should. It's about time."

Barbara comes from Eritrea which, along with Ethiopia, Somalia and Libya, formed Italy's short-lived African Empire, assembled in the 1930s and dissolved in the ashes of Mussolini's Italy in World War II. Mussolini himself had been minister for Africa in the 1930s before becoming Italy's president, and the country's African empire was run from this very building, turned over to the Food and Agriculture Organization when it was set up to fund world farming in the 1950s.

It was a far more recent colonial experience that crashed across the conference floor as Robert Mugabe stole the show with a vintage stream of paranoid rhetoric on Tuesday. His policies have pushed Zimbabwean inflation beyond what would be thought possible. And, although four million people are reported to be starving, he expelled a major aid organisation this week, saying that food aid is a conspiracy to bring him down. He said it was all the fault of what he called "Zimbabwe's former colonial master," the UK, trying to effect regime change in its wrath over his compulsory seizure of land from white farmers.

The Secretary of State for International Development, Douglas Alexander, went further than any other politician here in condemnation, calling Mr Mugabe's presence at the conference "obscene."

Amid these reminders of old empires, the unacknowledged new world empire - that of the USA - is flexing its muscles on the food issue.

The biggest divisions at the Rome conference are over two issues - genetically modified crops and biofuels - and, on both, the US stands on the side of the new technologies. It believes GM food to be safe and is subsidising the planting of biofuel crops.

Africa's resistance to growing GM food is in large part led by resistance in Europe. If African countries cannot export food to Europe, then they want no part of the new technology. But that is not the whole story.

One of the most hi-tech GM laboratories in the world is in Uganda. When I visited it, the technicians were looking for a cure for a blight called "banana wilt," which devastates growth of the large green bananas that are a big source of protein in East Africa.

In a laboratory, under bright artificial sunlight, thousands of tiny banana trees were being injected and dissected by white-coated lab assistants, who were all Ugandan, as was the management. But the funding was all from the USA, rolling out its technology where it can.

In Rome, Kenya's agriculture minister told me that this was the kind of technology that Africa needs. But it comes with strings attached. GM crops require fertilisers and other specialised products to keep them going and they all come from the USA. And crops that need planting every year, like wheat and rice, need to have all of their seed replaced annually by new seed and that too comes from the USA.

That would be a major change in practice for small farmers, who up to now have always retained part of their harvest to replant during the following season.

A UN scientific examination of the way forward in agriculture earlier this year concluded that, where new technology is tried, it needs to be both sustainable and appropriate, building on what

With land scarce, food is increasingly competing against biofuels, once thought to be a magic solution to reducing the world's dependence on oil and coal, but now causing more questions to be asked, because of the amount of energy needed to convert the plants to fuel. Three-quarters of the increase in US maize production last year went on biofuels.

And the growth in planting crops for biofuels worldwide last year has been identified by the report on the table at the Rome conference as one of the main causes of the runaway rise in food prices during the first 3 months of this year. African countries are asking why their hungry people are having to pay more for food when the USA is subsidising growth of crops for biofuels.

Within 10 years, 40% of US maize production will go on biofuels.

The talks last were taking place amid the ruins of another empire, that of ancient Rome, which began its decline and fall when the demand for grain to feed a city of more than a million people became impossible to sustain.

Finding a solution to the problem of feeding nine billion people - the estimated peak of world population by the middle of this century - will take more than the dynamism of empires to achieve.

Perhaps it is only the United Nations, established and meeting last week amid the ghosts of old empires, that can make the difference.

BBC

FAO meeting sends food security to top of international agenda

World leaders meeting to discuss soaring food prices appeared set to drop calls for more controls on biofuels in a final declaration to win agreement on a plan to halve the number of hungry people by 2015.

The last draft of the statement by delegates from more than 180 nations at the UN- sponsored Food Security Summit in Rome dropped references to setting international guidelines on the production of biofuels, instead calling for more study. The debate on biofuels has centered on whether their use drives up food prices by using land that would otherwise produce crops.

``It was clear before the summit that we were unlikely to see any significant shift in biofuels policy in Europe or the U.S.,'' said a senior analyst at Lehman Brothers in London. ``I would have been surprised if there had been any highly condemnatory wording in the document.''

Debate over biofuels was the focus of the most discord at the three-day meeting being held to discuss how to ensure that the highest commodity prices in three decades don't further swell the ranks of the world's 860 million hungry people. The U.S. and the European Union have pledged to expand biofuel production to combat global warming and reduce dependence on fossil fuels.

``It is essential to address the challenges and opportunities posed by biofuels, in view of the world's food security, energy and sustainable development needs,'' the draft said. It also said that biofuel use must be sustainable and take into account the need to achieve global food security.

The diversion of land to the cultivation of crops for ethanol production has contributed about 30 percent of the rise in food prices, the Washington-based International Food Policy Research has said. The U.S. has put the figure at less than 3 percent.

``Throwing billions of dollars at biofuels and setting targets that cannot be reached in a sustainable way ignores the obvious impact these policies are having,'' Barbara Stocking, the director of Oxfam UK, said in a statement.

The portion of the U.S. corn crop devoted to grain-derived ethanol will rise to 33 percent from 23 percent last year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Most of the crop is used for animal feed.

The U.S., the world's biggest producer of ethanol from corn, and Brazil, the top maker of the fuel from sugar cane, have skirmished at the meeting over the issue. The two countries produce more than 80 percent of the world's biofuels, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said in his opening address on June 3 that ethanol from sugar cane gives off 8.3 times more energy than is needed to produce it, while for corn, the ratio is 1.5 times.

A 60 percent increase in food prices since the beginning of 2007 has sparked riots in more than 30 countries that depend on imported food. The wealthiest nations pledged $6.3 billion in emergency aid last year, yet critics say that will do little unless accompanied by policies that promote greater output.

The draft declaration also called for countries to slash trade barriers and help give farmers in developing nations a chance to sell their products on world markets.

The meeting succeeded in raising the food-price issue to the top of the international agenda before the meeting of the Group of Eight industrialized nations next month in Japan, said Lennart Bage, the president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

``This conference has recognized that what is needed is not just a quick fix for today,'' he told reporters. ``In order to avoid food price rises in the future, we need to invest longer term in agriculture.''

FAO Director General Jacques Diouf has said the world needs to invest $30 billion a year to boost agricultural production and fight hunger worldwide. Food output per person in Africa has fallen for the past 30 years, and agriculture productivity is a quarter of the world average, according to the UN.

Last year, with food prices surging, development aid from donors such as the U.S., the European Union, Japan, Switzerland and Canada dropped 8.4 percent in real terms to $103.7 billion.

``Hunger is on the march now,'' World Food Programme Executive Director Josette Sheeran said. ``This really is not acceptable in a world where we know how to produce food.''

Bloomberg

Peripheral issues distract FAO food summit

It was supposed to be an emergency conference on food shortages, climate change and energy. At the opening ceremony June 3rd, the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki Moon, noted that there were nearly one billion people short of food and called upon countries gathered there to act with "a sense of purpose and mission."

"Only by acting together, in partnership, can we overcome this crisis," he said.

But when the microphone was opened to the powerful politicians who had flown in from all over the world, they spoke mostly about economics and politics.

The U.S. secretary of agriculture, Ed Schafer, talked about the benefits of biofuels and how genetically modified crops could ease world hunger. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil spoke for half an hour about how Brazilian biofuels were superior to the U.S. offerings. The president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, talked about how colonialism had created the food crisis. And President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran spoke of the need to inject religion into food politics.

Everyone complained about protectionism, though not their own.

On Wednesday, food experts as well as many representatives from poor countries wondered whether these divided forces could add up to a solution to a global conundrum: how to feed one billion hungry people.

"What is the common denominator here? It is a food crisis," said President Denis Sassou-Nguesso of the Republic of Congo. "That is the immediate problem for us."

At the three-day conference put on here by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, there was a lot of argument about whether the high food prices were caused by the rush to biofuels, protective tariffs, the soaring price of oil or distorting subsidies.

There has been much less talk about donors developing the new kind of aid program that most experts agree is needed: one that invests in developing agriculture in poor countries and spends less to ship food halfway around the world to feed hungry people.

"The era of food aid is over - there is no more sending food from America to Africa," Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary general, said in an interview.

Annan was in Rome to announce his latest project, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, a joint program with several UN agencies to assist small African farmers in increasing their output. Donors, he said, need to do more to improve agricultural practice in Africa and Asia, by providing tools, fertilizers, seeds, silos and knowledge.

"Away from the cameras, I am starting to hear the right things," he said, noting that African agricultural productivity has dropped for the past two decades. "I'm hoping they will go home and adopt policies to ensure global food production, on the ground, in Africa, Africa and Asia. It's much more effective."

Indeed, officials from many major donor countries said they had been rethinking food aid policies, if only because food prices are now so high and transport is impossibly expensive, with oil costing more than $130 a barrel. Also, "there are no more surpluses" for food aid, since crops are also used for fuel, Annan said.

Henrietta Fore, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said that transport costs were now soaking up 50 percent of the agency's food aid money and that rising prices of essential commodities like oil were "eating away at our purchasing power."

In the past, the U.S. program was heavily weighted toward sending food abroad, and required that its aid be purchased in the United States and transported on American vessels. "This crisis has made people think again," she said. "We have a new landscape for food and food needs."

Fore said that in a bill now before Congress, 25 percent of food in a new $350 million aid package could be purchased overseas. But even that has not been approved yet.

In the meantime, many representatives from poorer countries expressed frustration at the tenor of the meeting.

"We believe the problem is much more political than everything else," said Walter Poveda Ricaurte, the Ecuadorean agriculture minister. "We have to differentiate between the countries who are really affected by the food crisis and those who are seeing it as an economic opportunity."

He said that when food prices were low, in recent decades, Ecuador had stopped producing its own wheat, corn and soy, favoring cheap imports instead. Now that prices of these commodities have doubled in the past year, the country can no longer afford them, he said.

The conference has raised money: The Islamic Development Bank pledged $1.5 billion Wednesday. The UN secretary general estimated that $15 billion to $20 billion was needed.

But there was little sign that the economic and political disputes that often took center stage here had resulted in new compromises.

Lula attacked the "absurdly protectionist farm policies in rich countries," a clear reference to the United States, which protects its own corn ethanol from competition with Brazilian ethanol, made from sugar cane.

U.S. delegates attacked barriers to trade in poorer countries, which they said made it harder to send food aid, as well as in the European Union, which has resisted allowing the sale of U.S.-made genetically modified seeds.

China, which has not invested heavily in biofuels, said that "grain-based biofuel has driven up grain utilization and has the potential to trigger more far-reaching problems."

Officials at the Food and Agriculture Organization were sanguine about the results. "Sometimes I think the discussion is not focused on the need of countries and poor people," said José Maria Sumpsi, assistant director general of the organization. "But you have to take into account that you are hearing the positions of the governments - defending their political views - which is different from whether they will fund immediate action."

IHT

Senegalese president Wade renews attack on FAO at food summit

By Terence Corcoran*

As the assembled bureaucrats at the world food summit in Rome tucked into their usual symbolic food crisis meals -- vol au vent (a puff pastry base) stuffed with corn and mozzarella, pasta with pumpkin and shrimps, veal meatballs and cherry tomatoes, fruit salad and vanilla ice-cream for dessert, along with a modest Orvieto Classico Poggio Calvelli 2005 ($8.99 a bottle) -- the President of Senegal delivered a blistering attack on the host of the summit, UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO.)

Abdoulaye Wade, who earlier this year called the FAO a "waste of money" that should be "scrapped," said he was disappointed by the latest grand display of bureaucratic failure. "We can't continue to be helped like beggars," said Wade in an address to the summit. "Don't keep imposing institutions (and) experts on us. Africa is not what it was 20 years ago. Stop this farce."

Wade is worth listening to. Among African countries, Senegal is a shining democracy unmarked by the gross corruption of its continental neighbours, with Wade acting as a market-opening liberal who has advanced privatization and other reforms to improve Senegal's economic performance. Last month, Wade took on the FAO, a frequently targeted UN bureaucracy that looks to be part of the problem rather than the solution. He criticized the UN's use of food as "charity." Among his other targets were top humanitarian relief non-governmental organizations (NGOs). He called the FAO a “bottomless pit of money largely spent on its own functioning with very little effective operations on the ground."

Instead of food handouts, Wade said, Africa needs fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation equipment, tractors, technology, and access to the global marketplace, on equal standing, for sale of its products. “We must halt this scenariowhich exploits the North’s altruistic character and the theme of poverty in the South, where titled distributors of aid, or improvised figures recruited to the cause ... Have managed to insert themselves between the resources and their destination and start off by largely helping themselves,” said Wade.

For more on Wade, and for a superior view of the world food crisis, it's hard to beat a recent paper, Food Failures and Futures, by Laurie Garrett of the Council on Foreign Relations. Writes Garrett: "Hundreds of foreign aid organizations -- in the UN system, bilateral government programs, and NGOs -- have tried for decades to improve agricultural production inside poor countries. But the scale of such investment has never come close to the wasteful, self-serving and counterproductive crop-donation schemes."

Here Garrett is taking a shot at the grotesque impact of programs such as the use of subsidies in developed nations to grow food that is then given away to developing nations. "The donated foods enter the local market at prices so low that they completely undermine regional producers."

An example is Malawi, where the U.S. government stepped in with free school breakfasts under a World Food Program -- thus undercutting a bumper crop of Malawian corn. That subsidized U.S. corn drove local corn out of the market is obviously perverse policy. Back to Abdoulaye Wade, who said it is time to end the farce, disband the food bureaucrats who he said were "largely to blame" for the global crisis in food and food prices.

*Terence Corcoran is Editor of the Financial Post.

National Post