Senegalese Agri-Tech Facilitates Farm Investment

Senegalese startup Bayseddo, which allows users to crowd invest in agriculture, has facilitated US$400,000 in investments in the last 18 months.

Formed after founder Mamadou Sall visited France and saw that all land was put to good use producing crops for local consumption, something which was not happening back home in Senegal, Bayseddo links farmer associations with land but no funds with potential investors.

“Our platform is predicated upon the fact that a large number of people want to invest in agriculture in Africa, but lack a proper introduction to the environment. We make it convenient for them. There is also approximately 1.2 million hectares of unexploited arable land in Senegal alone, and that is an enormous opportunity.”

“Our business model creates a win-win-win scenario, allowing farmers to increase their standard of living in rural areas, investors to get a return on investment of between 12 and 25 per cent in six months, and us to contribute to the eradication of the food self-sufficiency myth in all of Africa. We are in every step of the value chain, from input level to harvest and sale,” Sall told Disrupt Africa.

Bayseddo stands alone in Senegal, but startups with similar models have succeeded elsewhere, most notably Farmcrowdy and Thrive Agric in Nigeria. This first-to-market status has helped the startup secure real traction, and more than US$400,000 has been invested through its platform so far.

“We work with 135 farmers, and have more than 150 investors,” said Sall. “Successfully operating projects to terms, and giving investors their promised return on investments have been the engine of our growth, because happy investors tend to share their happy experiences with fellow investors. The same goes for producers. Reluctant ones at first became believers in our system because we do not compromise on either the quality of our products or the commitment needed.”

The startup, which takes 25 per cent of the margin from any project run through its platform, raised US$100,000 in funding late last year from the Délégation de l’Entrepreneuriat Rapide (DER), a financing vehicle launched by the Senegalese government to boost the local tech scene, and has already begun expanding.

“We’re also operating in Mali in partnership with Orange Mali. The next step is the entire West African region,” Sall said.

Disrupt Africa

Senegalese villagers vow to fight biofuels project over land claims

Villagers from northern Senegal vowed in August to fight a project by Senegalese and Italian investors to produce biofuels on their land, a venture already forced to relocate once by deadly protests.

"We will fight those who want to take our land. It is the land of our ancestors, an area of 26,000 hectares which houses villages, thousands of heads of cattle, mosques, cemeteries," Oumar Ba, a representative of a collective of affected villages, told journalists. "Whoever wants to take our land will first walk over our dead bodies," said Ba, who lives in the village of Ndiael in the region of the same name.

The Senegalese-Italian company Senethanol/Senhuile had recently announced it was moving the project from the village of Fanaye, where violent protests in October 2011 left two people dead, leading government to suspend the venture.

Senethanol/Senhuile wants to grow sweet potatoes for the production of biofuels, a renewable energy source which has soared in popularity as oil prices rise and concerns grow over emissions from traditional fuels.
But the organisation is again encountering resistance at its new project site.

The United States and Brazil are the biggest producers, but investors have been criticised for buying up large swathes of land in Africa to produce fuel to be exported to their nations.

Senethanol/Senhuile has denied its project is an example of land-grabbing, and last year described it as "an unquestionable interest in the improvement of the economic and social situation of the villages concerned and all Senegalese."
 
 "The case of Fanaye must serve as a lesson to authorities," said Marieme Sow of the NGO Enda Pronat, who denounced "land-grabbing in Senegal by multi-nationals." "We are making this appeal for government to realise that 60 percent of the population of this country is made up of farmers who need this land."

Senegalese rap group "Bidew Bou Bess" (New Star in the Wolof language) presented a song called "Don't Touch My Land" to journalists. "Let's block the road to those who want to plunder our land. Let's stop those who tear up our land. They want our land for profit. They are colonising us, they are using us," the song said.

PhysOrg

Senegal peanut harvest falls after poor 2011 rains

Senegal’s rain season, never as heavy as that of its more southerly neighbors, was poorer and more erratic than usual in 2011. The rains, which normally begin in July for most of the country, started several weeks later than expected and were generally characterized by light downfalls and long dry spells.

A similar trend has sparked fears of a food crisis in several of West Africa’s Sahel countries, although Senegal is considered one of the relatively food secure countries.

Peanuts are Senegal’s main agricultural commodity, cultivated by mostly small scale farmers for use by the country’s food oil processing industry, and for export. The country is one of the world’s top producers of peanuts, the sector first commercially established during the French colonial era.

Oil tracker Oil World reports the 2011 peanut harvest was 450,000 tons, almost half of the previous year’s 840,000 tons. The fall in farmer income comes at a time of complaints about the rising cost of living

African Agriculture

Africa’s mixed tobacco fortunes

Several African countries grow tobacco in low quantities. A few are large producers for whom the crop is an important part of agriculture and the economy. Yet it is a product that most African countries make at least half-hearted attempts to discourage their citizens from using, on health grounds.

Recent tobacco-related developments in three countries, Malawi, Senegal and Zimbabwe, show the contradictions Africa faces over a lucrative export crop that is also a known human health hazard.

Senegal is not a grower of tobacco, but up to one in three adults and 20% of young people are said to be smokers. Except for warning signs on cigarette packs and advertising, there are no high profile anti-smoking campaigns as in some countries. However, there was uproar in December 2011 when major cigarette company Philip Morris International slashed the price of its Marlboro products in what it says was a move to be competitive with other brands on the market. The price of a pack of 20 went from about US$1.25 to about 80cents. The same packet is said to cost more than $7 in some markets in Europe, and to average $6 in the US.

The response was immediate and widespread. If smoking is mostly well tolerated, this was seen as a renewed assault on public health, especially of impressionable young people, who would find it much easier to purchase a leading cigarette brand.

For Malawi, tobacco is a vitally important crop, and accounts for 60% of its exports. The projection by Tobacco Association of Malawi (TAMA) president Reuben Maigwa that this year’s harvest may have to be revised downwards by as much as 50% is therefore a grave matter for the country’s economy. This year’s so far poor rains and last year’s lackluster auction prices are given as the cause of the expected slump.

Previous efforts by the government to set floor prices for tobacco have simply led to international buyers staying away.

TAMA represents 80% of Malawi’s tobacco growers. MalawiToday.com reports that Maigwa said in his tours of traditional tobacco growing areas he had observed much lower cultivation of the crop this year.

MalawiToday.com says the Tobacco Control Commission (TCC) had initially projected tobacco production to reach 160 million kilogram in 2012. A 50% reduction of this figure would represent a huge drop from the 237 million kg total for various tobacco varieties for 2011.

Malawi is already reeling from various economic problems. The Malawi kwacha currency has dropped in value in recent months, sharply raising consumer prices and shortages. Long queues have been experienced for fuel. Frequent and long power cuts have also affected economic activity. Normally peaceful Malawi has in recent months experienced violent demonstrations against the government over economic and political disgruntlement.

A diplomatic spat with former colonial power and major donor Britain caused the latter to withdraw significant aid to Malawi. Among programmes scaled back was the country’s successful agricultural inputs subsidy scheme. It has been credited with making the once famine-prone country produce bumper maize harvests several years in a row. Poor rains during the current cropping season are also expected to cause a slump in the yield of maize, the country’s staple crop.

A 50% reduction in the tobacco crop would only compound Malawi’s economic problems, and possibly lead to more political unrest.

Zimbabwe, Malawi’s neighbor, is also a major producer of tobacco, with 50% of export earnings coming from the crop. The tobacco sector is one of the earliest farming sectors to recover from a now decade-old land reform effort, with production now mostly by small scale farmers instead of large scale commercial farmers. Another recent shift is the increasing role of Chinese companies in supporting farmers and in purchasing the crop.

The country’s best tobacco year was in pre land reform 2000, when 237 million kg of tobacco was auctioned. The lowest year was the 49 million kg of 2008. The years in between saw steadily declining production as the country faced a variety of severe economic and political problems. There has been rapid recovery since then. 60 million kg was sold in 2009, more than doubling to 123 million kg in 2010. Auctioned in 2011 were 132 million kg, according to the Zimbabwe Trade Association. The Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board says the 2012 target is 150 million kg.

Whereas in Malawi low tobacco auction prices are said to be making many farmers shift to growing other crops, in Zimbabwe many farmers are abandoning other crops, including price-controlled maize, to shift to growing tobacco. 2011 auction prices averaged about US$2.70, compared to much less than $2 in Malawi. Poor rains are expected to affect all crop production in 2012, but the different needs of tobacco and maize may mean the country finding itself in the position of a relatively good tobacco harvest and a poor maize harvest.

However, the ‘green gold’ that increasing numbers of Zimbabwean farmers are flocking to growing has been blamed for encouraging deforestation. Few of the small scale farmers have access to standard coal-fired curing barns, and so they cut down trees for use in their tobacco curing.

While the agriculture and finance ministries encourage and welcome the growth of the tobacco sectors, the health and environment ministries must quietly contend with the many ill-effects on human health and the environment. These are just a few of the many contradictions that tobacco growing presents.

African Agriculture

Prospects and pitfalls along Sahel's anti-desertification Great Green Wall

Former goat-herder Samba Ba proudly points to a row of metre-high acacia trees growing amid the fine
grasses that are the only other vegetation in this part of northern Senegal's arid savannah. "Planting trees is a blessing - trees mean life. We call this the Nile River of the Sahel."

Ba hopes that in time the trees will bear black fruits that can be used as goat-feed. He and his fellow villagers are also planting the Sahel acacia, which produces a gum with medicinal properties, the tamarind, which has edible bitter-sweet fruit, and the desert date or "sump" tree, which bears small fruits whose oil can be used in cooking. These are all thorny trees with small leaves, the only kind that can survive in the arid conditions.

Sedentary and semi-nomadic Fulani herdsmen are planting five hectares of vegetable and fruit crops and approximately 1,000 trees as part of the Great Green Wall project ("La Grande Muraille Verte"), an ambitious pan-African environmental programme designed to combat desertification along the southern edge of the Sahara and provide nomadic populations with extra livelihoods while enhancing their food security.

The scheme falls within the framework of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, which aims to decrease poverty and improve food sources, and is being supported by the Global Environment Facility (GEF). Donors have pledged US$3 billion to the 11 participating countries: Burkina Faso, Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Sudan.

The governments of these 11 Sahelian states intend that 20 years from now, a giant hedge, 15km wide and 7,000km long, spreading across two million hectares, will help slow the advancing desert and impede the hot winds that increase erosion.

"The wall is just the final result. What we're looking for... is to protect and improve the eco-systems of these Sahel regions, and [through this] to improve the diets, health, lifestyle and environment of the Savannah people," said Matar Cissé, director general of the national agency implementing the project, in the Senegalese capital, Dakar.

Chronic drought has made it increasingly difficult for Fulani nomads to make a traditional living as pastoralists. Ba, 42, a Fulani who has settled in the village of Mbar Toubab, 100km south of where the Sahara desert starts in neighbouring Mauritania, says herdsmen would consider settling in such villages if they could earn a living by growing and selling fruit and vegetables.


Cissé said, "We are, we hope, developing a system that will help these people help themselves to stay in one place, create jobs and raise their own incomes. For the nomadic peoples, this could fundamentally change the way they live."


Villagers are taught how to plant market gardens and use drip irrigation by connecting a small elevated water tank to perforated pipes that deliver small amounts of water to each plant. "We travel great distances in search of pasture and water. If this project is successful... this area won't be hopeless any more," Ba said. "To have water and food to feed ourselves and our animals on our doorstep can only be beneficial."

A Niger government study found that pastoralists with small herds had lost 90 percent of their livestock in successive droughts.

So far, the 133 women participating in the scheme in Mbar Toubab have produced lettuce, tomatoes, onions, potatoes, okra, aubergines, watermelons, carrots, cabbages and turnips. Their mango and orange trees have yet to bear fruit, said Kumba Ka, President of the Gardening association, who walks six km every day to work in her garden

Many villagers thought something like this would never be possible. "We're growing so many different types of vegetables that normally only grow where water is deep," Ka said.

Such a project must be based on market research that identifies who will be able to buy the vegetables, where, and at what prices, if it is to support livelihoods and food security, said Peter Gubbels, West Africa coordinator of NGO Groundswell International and author of the Sahel Working Group's recent report, Escaping the Hunger Cycle: Pathways to Resilience in the Sahel.

The Great Green Wall could play an important role in environmental management and supporting nomadic livelihoods, but it must not be seen as "the solution" to food security, Gubbels said. The project risks being too ambitious by taking on desertification as well as food security, which are separate issues, requiring separate solutions.


Food insecurity in the Sahel is largely due to a growing gap between rich and poor, with an "underclass of the bottom 30 percent" living in chronic poverty, he said. Solutions include subsidized prices, social protection schemes, and disaster reduction, among many others.

Desertification is what forces people to migrate. "In the popular imagination desertification is about billowing sand dunes advancing at a rate of two kilometres a year, but... [it] is the overuse of natural resources, over-grazing, intensive farming and the subsequent erosion of land-pockets that become completely denuded and then join together," Gubbels said.

Tree-planting projects to combat desertification work best when the trees are owned by the farmers themselves, said Chris Reij, coordinator of the African Regreening Initiative.

Gubbels noted that "Usually only 20 percent of newly planted trees will survive... so there is a high risk to tree-planting... unless we mobilize millions of [farmers] to invest in trees as well as manage them themselves, the battle against desertification cannot be won."

The most innovative projects to improve the lives and livelihoods of pastoralists are being developed by the pastoralists themselves, with the help of NGOs, said Reij. In Niger they have established settlement sites where they plant trees and market gardens alongside health and education services. Pastoralists then migrate from these points.

Rather than using such schemes to encourage the nomads to settle - which often leads to tension with sedentary communities - a combination of mobility and agriculture is the most risk-averse survival strategy. "[Partial] mobility...is a much better and less risky strategy than staying in one place... [which] leads to over-grazing," and if the area does not get much rainfall that year, "you are much more vulnerable," Gubbels pointed out.


In a worst-case scenario, "[Without] sufficient technical guidance and support... [for the Great Green Wall], in a few years you'll see a broken-down tractor, a scattering of a few small trees in the village plantation, a few families benefiting from the market gardening, and little positive overall change, with the poorest families as chronically vulnerable as before," Gubbels said.

However, if the ambitious project is seen as a framework for funding and a platform for sharing information across the 11 Sahelian states, he said, it could positively impact the lives and livelihoods of pastoralists.


IRIN

Two dead in Senegalese protest over Italian investor's disputed biofuel project

A disputed biofuels project in northern Senegal has triggered violent clashes between villagers, leaving two people dead and two seriously wounded, police said on October 27.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a police officer said residents of Fanaye village “fought with sticks and machetes” in disagreement over the project. 

Fanaye is situated in the Senegal River valley, near the Mauritanian border, one of the country's main areas of agricultural production. 

Local media explained that some villagers were angry that thousands of hectares of land had been given to an Italian to cultivate sweet potatoes for the production of biofuels, sparking fears over the loss of grazing land and displacement of villages. 

A local organisation defending land rights in the village said the project would lead to "displacement of villages, destruction of cattle and desecration of cemeteries and mosques."

Senegal has in recent years pushed the idea of using its land for biofuel production, with the backing of Brazil and fervent support of President Abdoulaye Wade.

Wade said he "deeply regrets" the deaths and wants an explanation. A cabinet statement said Wade had asked the ministers of agriculture, environment and decentralisation for "a detailed statement on this situation."

AFP

Senegal: fish farming breathes new life into rural economy

by Koffigan E. Adigbli

July signals the beginning of three months of intense activity for residents of the seven villages around the small dam at Sébi Ponty. The dam was stocked with tilapia in 2006, and aquaculture is proving to be a vital economic activity for youth in the area.

In October, fishing in the dam will be forbidden for two or three months to allow stocks to reproduce before another period of harvest from December to February.

The dam - 500 metres long, 400 metres wide and around four metres deep - was stocked with 17 tonnes of tilapia hatchlings five years ago. According to the ANA (Senegal's National Aquaculture Agency), it now yields 50 kilogrammes of fish per day during the twice-yearly fishing season. The operation is handled by a cooperative enterprise involving 300 local youth.

One of those pulling in the nets, 20-year-old Pape Ndaw, says that since the dam's rehabilitation in 2006 by the local department of agricultural engineering, many families have come to depend on the fishery.

'In addition to aquaculture, this pond also serves diverse agriculture and livestock activities in the area,' Ndaw said. 'I earn more than 120,000 CFA francs (around 270 dollars) per month when there's a good catch. I'm supporting my elderly parents as well as my own young family.'

Ndaw said the work at the dam is his only employment. 'But during the off-season of two or three months in order when the fish are allowed to reproduce, I keep myself busy with poultry at the house.'

Anita Diagne Diouf, 30, says the fishery offers real alternatives to the area's young people who often respond to the high cost of living by joining an exodus towards the capital, Dakar.

'We [the women] are the vendors of fish products… We share the income and get the same amount as the men,' Diouf told IPS. 'During the off-season, when the men work with animals or repairing nets ahead of the new fishing season, we turn to winnowing grain and doing maintenance on the livestock pens.'

Aquaculture, according to Awa Guèye, the official representative of the youth employed at the pond, first of all meets the food needs of families, and secondly provides a source of income.

'Previously, women were forced to go as far as Rufisque, more than 20 kilometres from Sébi Ponty, to get fish to cook,' she said.

According to experts at the ANA, however, the dam has several obstacles to overcome, including training for users, improved availability of equipment for the fishing cooperative, and better access to credit. But the chief challenge is the co-existence of various users.

The president of the dam's management committee, Amadou Camara, explains that in addition to fish, the pond plays an important role in horticulture and livestock rearing.

'The market gardeners use water from the dam. The herders bring their animals here to drink, especially during the dry season. This often creates tension between us, the managers of the dam, and the herders or farmers,' he said.

One worrying sign of poor coordination amongst users is that the dam is filling with sand. Mamadou Ngom heads an ANA unit focused on popularising and improving the value of dams like Sébi Ponty's, and he says siltation could threaten the dam's role as an economic pillar for this area.

'This problem is caused by overexploitation of the water; the market gardeners in the area have to stop pumping water for irrigation,' Ngom told IPS.

'Add to this the lack of fishing gear, of proper conservation of the fish, and of access to finance for the operators… The fishing cooperative needs canoes, nets, and screens to prevent the fish escaping, especially during the flood period,' he said.

Babacar Ndao, the national minister with responsibility for small-scale water reservoirs, says the government will soon begin dredging sand from the dam. 'We are aware that the dam is a multipurpose one, used at once by gardeners, herders, subsistence farmers and aquaculturists, hence the urgency of clearing it out in order to sustain it,' he says.

Ndao says that the practice of drip irrigation, which helps farmers make more efficient use water, will be introduced with development assistance from Israel.

'Further, the government will launch a programme to improve the equipment and reinforce training of the various classes of users.' he added.

Inter Press Service

Overproduction of onions in Senegal

The production of onions in Senegal has risen from 120,000 to 200,000 tons per year. As a consequence of the overproduction the prices tumbled from 3.71 €/kg to 1.86 €/kg, a decrease of 50%.

Amadou Ning, minister of Trade, has appointed an inter professional commission, which will look to broaden  and save the onion market. The commission, existing out of growers, traders and exporters, will do research on how to easily store onions longer and will search for more markets.

There is also a commission which will look at export to better control the stocks of onions.

From European countries only Spain imports from Senegal. For 2012 the Spanish need for Senegalese onions is 10,000 ton.

Fresh Plaza

How climate data is benefiting Senegal`s farmers

Smallholder farmers have years of experience in assessing how climatic conditions, particularly rainfall, affect their crops. But as the climate changes, that knowledge — often gathered over a lifetime — may no longer be valid.

As a result, vulnerable farmers need help to adapt or fine-tune their practices. But as climate monitoring and research become more sophisticated, the gap between the technology and farming communities is getting wider.

A project in Senegal is now helping to bridge that gap.

The InfoClim project collects climate information and shares it with vulnerable populations, particularly farmers, to help them adjust their sowing, cultivation and other dates to suit the current climate.

The scientific data are then shared with communities through four well-equipped regional 'observatories'. Local people trained by the project use community radio stations and meetings to pass the climate information to farmers.

The project provides farmers and local communities with climate data and soil statistics, and helps them share their knowledge to improve planting practices and ensure better yields.

Members of community-based organisations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and local decision-makers have learnt how to use agro-meteorological data to assess different options for adapting to climate change.

These include changing planting dates, using drought-resistant seeds, diversifying crops and planting perennial crops, improving water and soil management, fighting soil erosion, developing agro-forestry, integrating crops, livestock and trees, and finding alternative sources of income.

The success of the project has depended on building reliable networks between researchers and rural communities to share information on climate change.

'The project allowed the sharing of views on climate change and [highlighted] the importance of access to the information as a means of strengthening the capacity of rural communities to adapt to this phenomenon,' said Butare.

'We also involved people from the local administration, local political decision-makers, community-based organisations and NGO representatives,' said Butare. 'Those forums are still working after the end of the project.'

The three-year research project, which started in 2008, was due to end in December 2010 but was extended by six months, spreading across four communities: Fandène, Notto Diobass, Taiba Ndiaye and Thiès. Other regions of Senegal are now asking for similar projects to help them...

...SciDev.Net

Fighting desertification: The great green wall of the Sahara

The rainy season has started in the rest of the country, but in Widou, in the heart of the Ferlo region in northern Senegal, the first raindrops won't fall until the end of July. In these tough times between harvests, most of the flocks have migrated to the south in hopes of grazing. There, on the brown and parched land, all that is left is a pitiful-looking green carpet burned by the sun and trampled by animals.

Just 100 meters away, an open-air lab is writing a new page of the region's history. In the tree nursery built by the Water and Forests Department, men are working, hose in hand. The women, bent over rows of small plastic containers, plant seedlings that will have to be ready for when the first rain arrives. This year, they need 390,000 of them.

Widou is one of the first communities selected by the Senegalese government to start the Great Green Wall project, a pan-African initiative launched in 2007 by the African Union. The goal is to create a wall of trees — 15 km wide and 7,600 km long — from Dakar to Djibouti to help slow desertification. Eleven countries are participating, but Senegal, where 535 km of the wall are planned, is the first country where the project is starting to take shape.

Colonel Matar Cisse, an environmental engineer, is wearing army fatigues and a cap. "The Great Green Wall is a crazy project!" he admits. But he quickly brushes away the idea that this project is about building an impenetrable wall. "It wouldn't make any sense," he says. "It's better to see it as us trying to make the forest denser wherever possible, to develop water retention, create natural reserves for the fauna, which has almost completely disappeared." For Cisse, the wall image works because it shows that they've "decided to colonize the desert instead of being at its mercy."

Cisse is also the head of the Great Green Wall National Agency and, as such, is in charge of turning this dream into reality. "We will succeed. We have the best scientists, and we have some experience," he says with a wide grin. Since 2008, reforestation has gained 5,000 hectares per year. "That's a first," says his colleague Pape Sarr, in charge of technical operations.

With time, agronomists, botanists and soil specialists have improved their work. First, they had to select the right species to plant. Seven were selected not only according to how they would adapt to the roughness of the terrain, but also for what they could give to the neighboring populations: the Acacia senegal for its gum arabic, the Balanite tree for its berries and oil, the Zyzyphus for its fruit. "We must plant trees people won't want to cut down," says Aliou Guisse, plant-ecology professor at the Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar.

The distance between trees was increased to limit competition between plants. "The soil is extremely depleted: in order for reforestation to be viable, it must be reconstituted with a higher concentration of bacteria. It's one of the main constraints of this project. We will have to wait seven or eight years to see if [our efforts have] worked," warns René Bally, research director at the French National Center for Scientific Research.

Reforested parcels of land — from 500 to 2,000 hectares in area — will be surrounded by a fence for five years. Cattle farmers will be able to get special authorized access. "First, I remind them of the rules — no machetes and no matches — then I give them a permit that allows them to cut the grass for their flocks or sell it," explains Omar Faye, who is charged with regulating access to land on the project.

The Great Green Wall is certainly a technical challenge. But it is also an ethical one. "If we can't convince the people that this project will give them a better life, we will fail," warns Guisse.

Employing only about 30 technicians, the Great Green Wall agency doesn't have the means to have a strong presence in the field, meaning it will soon be up to the people themselves to look after the project. In Windou, residents have a proven penchant for that kind of responsibility, with a successful 7-hectare vegetable-garden project just outside the town. There, 300 women produce tomatoes, salad, melons and potatoes. They quickly learned how to sow, replant, fertilize with manure, and harvest. "Last year, these women made more than €1,500 from the part of the harvest they sold on the market," says Momar Mbaye Ba, who's in charge of the project.

"In about three years we'll be autonomous," says Fatou Aidara, president of the Garden Commission. She's lived there forever, witnessed the great droughts of the '70s and '80s that killed people and animals. She also saw hopes crushed by several development projects designed by international-cooperation groups. She wants to believe that this time, promises will be kept.

Time

Senegal farmers fight desertification with trees

by George Fominyen

Dame Diop looks at the green leaves of trees growing on the sandy Sahelian soil of his Senegal village, Khatre Sy, and says...“The trees had disappeared because of many droughts and also because people were cutting them for firewood and for fodder for livestock,” he added. “We felt we would not survive if this desertification continued so we decided to act.”

The people...decided to pool their farmlands together and zone off sections to allow trees – mainly varieties of the African acacia – to regenerate. They used some of the regeneration sites as farmlands where they planted crops – groundnuts, millet and sorghum.

During the rainy season, crops are planted and can get nitrogen from falling leaves as the trees enter dormancy, while the tree’s bare branches don’t block sunlight. The trees also produce seed pods which are used as fodder for livestock.

The result of the initiative is growing hectares of parkland – agro-forests – which some researchers see as vital in providing a barrier against desertification in the semi-arid Sahel region which runs south of the Sahara desert.

full article...Alertnet

Senegal: Groundnuts producer price subsidy removed

The government of Senegal has removed price support subsidy paid to farmers of groundnut. As the new rain season begins, the budget set aside to support groundnut farming has been decreased from 38 to 25 billion CFA francs.

The Minister of Agriculture announced at a recent inter-ministerial meeting on the outcome of the last crop year that the government decided to remove the subsidy in the producer price of groundnuts for the 2011-2012 campaign because, "the price of groundnut is already very high. Today you can not have a kilo of peanuts for less than 250 CFA francs, while the official price is 165 CFA francs.''

He said the money saved would be used for farm equipment and fertilizers.

The great African land rush

by Drew Hinshaw

Hours into the interior of Senegal sits a cabbage, onion, sorghum, and lettuce field the size of Gibraltar that once belonged, it is said, to the villagers of Keur Moussa. They may never get it back.

In 1999, a well-to-do religious leader managed to acquire the title for the 1,500 acres of farmland that this village had long held in trust. Since he nabbed it, the plot has sprouted sheds, power lines, a water tower, tractors, and pick-up trucks that give it more the look of Iowa corn country than a Senegalese lot. Village women who used to grow, sell, and profit off its produce are now trucked in and out daily, tilling their grandparents' soil like migrant workers. It earns them two to four dollars a day.

"It's better than nothing," one of the women, Maty Ngom said.

Across the dirt road, the president of Senegal's Senate holds a 250-acre stretch, while a second religious leader claims another 2,200 acres. There is also the mystery businessman -- one "Baba Diop," a Senegalese name as generic as John Smith -- whose title to 285 acres, village gossip says, is a front for a foreign investor. A Lebanese, Ngom claims.

Whoever this land once belonged to, it's just a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of square miles of farmland that have been procured -- some bought, some leased, some stolen -- from the villagers of the tropics. The speed and scale at which ground in the developing world is being auctioned up is extraordinary: between 2008 and 2009 alone, the World Bank catalogued 174,000 square miles of land acquisitions in poor countries -- an acreage the size of Sweden. The lion's share of it, 124,000 square miles -- the size of Norway -- sits in Africa, in nations like Sudan, Ethiopia, Madagascar, and Mali. All are famous for their famines. None, not incidentally, are famous for good governance.

Neither China nor the U.S. is driving the land scramble: Saudi Arabia and its neighbors are. Demand for arable land is growing, while supply is shrinking.

Those 174,000 square miles, meanwhile, are only the plots the World Bank could confirm. The local religious leader in Keur Moussa -- whose minders chase away camera-wielding journalists -- may or may not be on the list. Colonel Muammar Qaddafi is. The Brother Leader boasts a 99-year lease on a 386-square-mile, Dallas-sized plot of Malian corn land, plus a chicken farm in Togo. That puts him in the company of such landholders as Saudi Arabia's Sheikh Mohammed al-Amoudi, who holds a century-long lease on Ethiopian rice valleys; Indionesia's Sime Darby, a conglomerate that charters 850 square miles of Liberia's palm oil marsh; the South Korean government (Sudan, wheat); and a host of hedge funds that scout out the cheapest rents left on the meager eight percent of the planet that is arable land.

This is the fire sale of a continent lurching from the farm to the factory. At the turn of the century, Africa is trying once more, as it did in independence days, to industrialize. It's an endeavor that will set it back a fortune. In the past decade, governments like that of Guinea or the Democratic Republic of Congo have swapped billions of dollars worth of mining rights in return for ports, dams, and railroads. Normally possessive governments are selling off their biggest assets -- like Nigeria's electric company -- and taking out historically large bonds to borrow whatever start-up cash the World Bank won't front them.

In Senegal's capital, a two-hour drive from Keur Moussa, the government is calculating ways to boost its $2.3 billion in state revenue by $500 million a year. And it needs $1.2 billion beyond that -- ten percent of its economy -- just to buy the petrol and grid improvements to power low-level industry, never mind its mammoth cement and car factories. To raise that colossal sum, the state is hiking visa fees, piling on new phone taxes, bullying customs agents into stricter suitcase searches, and has asked everyone from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to one of Rahm Emanuel's brothers for help.

Failing all that, Africa's industrial hopeful's like Senegal can sell land, the one resource -- more than mines or high-profile foreign assistance -- each has in abundance. And that, three years after China became a net food importer, and two years after catastrophic spikes in food prices, is a resource worth selling.

The world's largest continent, despite or perhaps because of its poverty, is also its fourth largest food importer. Yet unlike, say, Japan, Africa's dependence on foreign food has nothing to do with a lack of terrain. It has more to do with the fact that a car mechanic like Cheik Gueye can't afford nice things. Born in Keur Moussa, Gueye quit his five-year stint fixing fenders in Dakar to return home and attempt his own land grab -- on a mechanic's budget. The cheap, used irrigation gear he could finagle leaks more than it irrigates, leaving mosquito pools that qualify this farm as malarious. Because his 500 acres sits on a lousy patch on the water table, every well he drill has to go deeper than the last one. Gueye worries that his workers spelunking his latest well to rev the pump-powering generator 15 meters down will asphyxiate on its diesel fumes, fall, and die trying to lift recalcitrant groundwater from a crummy well.

And Gueye is one of the few lucky villagers who even has electricity. The rest, like Ndiaga Ndiaye, use buckets to water garden-sized plots of vegetables. Ndiaye works the sandy floodplain on the edge of the religious leader's 1,500 acre lot. His bucket-fed sandtrap cabbage farm yields a pretty pathetic crop.

Africa holds half of the land that will be made arable before 2030

"We just work here to eat," he said. At 3 p.m., he changes clothes, and starts his shift as a taxi driver.

Ndiaye's plot is the only land being farmed in view. All around him, land is owned, but unused, as is most of the land investors have acquired in Africa in the past five years. "Only 12 percent of it is actually being farmed," Oxfam Senegal's Head of Economic Justice Lamine Ndiaye said. "The other 88 percent is just sitting there. It's just for speculation. You buy it, and three years later, you sell it at a higher price."

Ndiaye wants to farm the unused plots, he said. "I have the experience -- years of experience -- and if I had the means, I could exploit this land," he said. But the last time he tried, he got chased off.

However bizarre a circus of villager frustration and arcane property deals Africa's land scene may be, it's hard to image a safer investment in the third millennium than soil. China is losing 1,400 miles of the stuff to desert every year, according to the Earth Policy Institute. Texas and California have each lost fifteen percent of their irrigated area since the 1990s, the group's president said.

But neither China nor the U.S. is driving the land scramble: Saudi Arabia and its neighbors are. The Persian Gulf's water reserves are diminishing, and in 30 years they may be kaput. In the gulf, and elsewhere, demand for arable land is growing, while supply is shrinking.

Africa holds half of the land that will be made arable before 2030, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization. It's not bad land. Rice paddies in the Senegal valley, for example, yield 50 percent more than the global average -- and, unlike Asia, this chunk of the tropics has yet to see its green revolution. A Saudi Arabian company called Foras says it's here to bring about just that. The land acquisition fund is looking to acquire "large" amounts of land in Senegal, Benin, and Mauritania, according to spokesman Momar Gueye. "What we are trying to do here is raise the quality of rice that's being produced locally," he said. "We bring new technology, like new seeds to improve production."

Gueye said the company will sell much of its Senegal-farmed rice in local markets, instead of exporting it all back to Saudi Arabia. A persistent complaint about companies like his is that ship the precious food they sow in a poor state like Senegal away to wealthier shores. But Foras is under no obligation to sell to anyone other than the highest bidder. Should the price of rice spike, it's hard to fathom why they wouldn't.

And while Gueye declines to comment on it, Reuters reported last year that the company is already negotiating for a 99-year lease on a 770 square kilometer stretch of Senegalese farmland. The lease is just half of the 1,500 square kilometers Reuters reports that the country's Agriculture Ministry is looking to rent to Saudi investors.

That's a stretch of turf four times the size of New York City. The question isn't just where in Senegal the Agriculture Ministry found that land, but where the people undoubtedly living on -- and off of it -- will go.

"There is no elsewhere," Ndiaye, the Oxfam researcher, said. "The myth that's brought so many investors is this thinking that there is so much empty land in Africa. The land is not empty. They're being occupied by the community, it's just that they're not recognized as owners of that land."

The Atlantic

India to develop farmland in Senegal

by Drew Hinshaw

India may sign an agreement with Senegal’s Agricultural Ministry to develop 150,000 hectares (370,658 acres) of farmland, the government said.

The land will be used to grow and process rice, corn, peanuts, cotton and cereals, the Communications Ministry said in an e-mailed statement in Dakar, the capital. The area will be equipped with irrigation pumps and machinery including tractors, the statement said, without providing further details.

Senegal, a food-importing country the size of Nebraska, is in its fourth year of President Abdoulaye Wade’s Grand National Agricultural Offensive, a campaign to reduce its dependence on food imports by boosting annual output of staple foods including rice and millet.

The Agricultural Ministry also plans to raise production of potatoes, wheat and hibiscus tea in 2011, according to the statement. The West African nation is expected to produce 50 tons of tomatoes this year, a 43 percent increase from the previous year, it said.

Bloomberg

Senegal achieves rice bumper harvest

by Drew Hinshaw

Senegal is producing enough rice to meet domestic needs and export the surplus, President Abdoulaye Wade said.

Last year’s harvest was 640,000 metric tons of rice, 40,000 tons more domestic demand, Wade said at a conference in the capital of Dakar. The yield was more than triple that of 2006, he said. A program with India will boost production to 1.1 million tons in a few years, he said.

“We’re going to produce 600,000 tons for local consumption and have a further 500,000 tons for export,” he said.

Senegal produced a record 1.286 million tons of peanuts last year, Wade said.

Peanuts account for 60 percent of the country’s agricultural exports, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The state sets farm gate prices at 165 West African CFA (35 cents) a kilogram (2.2 pounds) during the December to May harvest. The Agriculture Ministry plans to extend the set price outside the harvest to support farmers, Wade said. Peanut oil exports by Senegal’s Suneor, the country’s biggest peanut-oil processing company, account for as much as half of world supply, according to a 2007 report by the USDA.

Bloomberg

Meanwhile...

Senegal may cut a subsidy on peanut-oil producers as the West African nation's harvest grows to its biggest in nearly four decades, said Malick Ba, head coordinator at the country's Agriculture Ministry.

Harvesting began in December and 246,419 metric tons were reaped to March 22, which was 18 percent higher than the same period a year earlier, Ba said.

Senegal may have the biggest crop since it produced 1.2 million tons of peanuts in 1975, Ba said.

Also...

Senegal will convert 125,000 hectares (308,882 acres) of land in the Senegal River valley into an area for growing rice by 2015, the newspaper le Soleil reported, citing Minister of Agriculture Khadim Gueye.

The West African nation will increase subsidies for seed and fertilizer purchased in the valley, the Dakar-based newspaper said.

Bloomberg

Senegalese farmers in David and Goliath fight against several foes

by Daniele Mariani

In Senegal, small farmers are battling against deforestation, global warming, drought – and the greed of bigger landowners.

Helping them in their struggle is Swiss Interchurch Aid, a Protestant organisation that funds a Senegalese association trying to find a way forward for local farmers.

In the area around Lake Tanma, the wind stirs up so much dust that it’s hard to breathe. The lake forms during the rainy season. All around the effects of deforestation and climate change can be felt. Grass is scarce. The occasional baobab tree offers some shade. In the past 40 years, rainfall has fallen by 25 per cent.

A group of women are harvesting beans. They wear scarves to protect their heads from the sun.

"This land, nearly 30 hectares, belongs to a ‘marabout’ [religious leader]. For their work, these workers are paid about 1,000 CFA [US$2], barely enough to buy two or three kilos of grain," says Ibrahima Cisse of the Woobin Federation, an association of small farmers in Keur Moussa, a rural community of some 50,000 inhabitants in 36 villages, about 50km northeast of Dakar.

The Lake Tanma region is known for its horticulture. The soil is fertile, but paradoxically, it is this particular characteristic that is causing problems.

Ever since the early seventies, small farmers have seen their land confiscated. It’s not so much multinationals or other countries eyeing such land (yet), rather the marabout and wealthy Senegalese city dwellers.

"The first major landowner moved here in 1972. Since then, others have followed and we continue to lose our land," says Cisse, pointing to a map of properties in the region. Some spread out over several hundred hectares, while the small farmers’ patches are relegated to the border area.

Senegalese land law is very different from that of Europe, where the focus is primarily on private property. Land is allocated by the rural authority president who is elected for five years. This system has allowed local traditions to be respected, but has also opened the door to abuse.

The levelling work done by large landowners has changed the topography and hydrography of the land, prompting further erosion and causing frequent flooding of small producers’ land further downstream.




Holes drilled by the big landowners to ease irrigation of their fields have led to declining levels of groundwater.

Today, to access water it is necessary to dig to a depth of at least 15-20 metres. The luckiest farmers can afford a pump, which costs up to €1,000. But the majority cannot. To irrigate crops they must equip themselves with a bucket, be patient and above all, very stubborn.

Although supported by Enda Pronat (Environment and Development Action in the Third World - Natural Protection of Crops, part of a Senegal-based development organisation), some small farmers formed the Woobin Federation to better defend their interests.

The federation has been supported since 2007 by Swiss Interchurch Aid, the aid organisation of the Swiss Protestant churches, which provided SFr100,000 from 2007-2010.




“The goal is to strengthen the association from an organisational and institutional point of view, so that it can be heard,” says Heidi Keita, programme coordinator in Senegal. “It also aims to promote techniques that enable the development of sustainable agriculture.”

Notably, in Landou, a village a few miles from Lake Tanma in a much less fertile area, the Woobin Federation has established “training” fields, which demonstrate techniques for storing water during the rainy season, or how to put up small fences to curb soil erosion.

"A few years ago, nothing grew here, but last year we even managed to grow some peanuts," says a farmer proudly.

For small farmers, the arrival of large landowners has also spelled problems for the sale of their products.

"Before, we could offer the fruit of our labour to exporters and earn a decent living. Today, only the large producers export. And even in the domestic market, they are big competition, as they sell their second best products here,” says Cisse.




And free trade has only worsened the situation. "A few years ago we could sell our local variety of tomato for 800 CFA (US$1.60). Today, with the mass import of tomatoes of Morocco, we can barely get 300 CFA.”

Compounding this, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation supports the expansion of large properties. It sees this evolution – if it is well managed – as an opportunity for agricultural development and a guarantee of food security.

"Frankly, I don’t understand,” says Mariam Sow, head of Enda Pronat. “Saudi Arabia wants to buy tens of thousands of hectares of land in Senegal to grow rice. It’s foreseeable that 70 per cent of production would end in Saudi Arabia and 30 per cent would remain here. Under these circumstances, how can we still talk about guaranteeing food security?”

“The problem is that our authorities don’t believe in our farmers,” she says. “There is no policy to support them, and many are forced to leave the countryside and be street vendors in cities. It is destroying the agricultural class."

Cisse however is confident that "if the small farmer had adequate support, he could also produce the resources needed to feed cities. The earth is our only hope."

Swissinfo

Senegal expects record rice crop in drive to meet local demand

by Drew Hinshaw

Senegal’s rice crop will probably exceed last year’s record harvest and meet at least 60 percent of domestic consumption needs, helping the country reach self sufficiency by 2015, a government official said.

Production was 350,000 metric tons in 2010, the most the former French colony has reaped in a single calendar year, said Salif Diack, rice program officer in the state-run Society for the Development and Exploitation of Land in the Senegal River Valley. The West African nation is “expected to produce more this year,” Diack said on Jan. 27 in an interview in Dakar, the capital. He didn’t provide a specific forecast.

Senegal’s government is using funding from the U.S. Millennium Challenge Account to rehabilitate land in the Senegal River Valley along its northern border with Mauritania. The program aims to level and irrigate uncultivated rice paddies and double the 62,000 hectares (153,205 acres) of currently farmed land within four years. The country of 12.5 million people consumes between 600,000 and 700,000 tons of rice annually, Diack said.

“If we maintain this input in terms of rehabilitating land, and advising farmers, within three to four years we will get self sufficiency,” he said. “We’ve got all the conditions on our side.”

Rice is a staple food in Senegal, Africa’s fourth-biggest importer of the grain, and an increase in domestic production over the past two years has reduced imports, which fell 2.1 percent last year to 700,000 tons, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s website. About half of those imports are exported to other countries in the region, according to the Agriculture Ministry.

In September, the Millennium Challenge Corp., which awards developmental aid to countries that have improved governance standards, signed a $540 million grant with the country, $170 million of which will be used to help irrigate and desalinate as much as 36,500 hectares of land in the valley, according to a document on the agency’s website.

Rice yields in Senegal, at 6 tons of rice per hectare per year, are higher than the global average of 4 tons per hectare per year, Mamour Gaye, a technical adviser in the Agriculture Ministry, said in August.

The Senegal River Valley accounts for 87 percent of the country’s rice production, Diack said.

Senegal initiated plans to boost output of the grain after international food prices rose in 2008 by replacing old irrigation pumps, digging drainage canals, desalinating land and offering a 70 percent subsidy for fertilizer.

Rough rice for March delivery fell as much as 0.9 percent to $14.95 per 100 pounds today, extending yesterday’s 0.7 percent decline, and traded at $15.05 at 11:45 a.m. London time. The price peaked at $25.07 in April 2008.

Bloomberg

Senegal's production of its rice needs now up to 50%

Senegal now produces at least half of the rice it consumes, director general of the Senegal River Valley National Development Agency, Mamoudou Deme was quoted as saying in state media.

"We rarely reached 150,000 tonnes of paddy rice (unmilled) annually. Today we are at least at 350,000 tonnes," the director told pro-government newspaper Le Soleil.

"At least half of what we consume in rice is produced in Senegal and 80 percent comes from the Senegal River Valley," in the north of the country, said Deme.

In 2008 Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade launched the Grand Agricultural Offensive for Food Security (GOANA) seeking to double rice production and increase maize and manioc yield in the west African nation.

The initiative's figures are however challenged by producer's organisations and agricultural specialists.

Senegal remains a huge consumer of rice imported from Asia which is a staple of traditional meals such as "ceebu jen" (rice with fish).

Deme lauded assistance provided by "French cooperation, the Arab countries, South Korea and Japan who injected billions (of CFA Francs) into the valley for a quantitative and qualitative improvement of production," according to the Senegalese Press Agency (APS).

AFP

Senegal in talks to lease farmland to Saudi Arabia

by Amena Bakr

Senegal is in talks with Saudi Arabia to lease farmland to grow food of an area nearly four times the size of Manhattan, an official in Senegal involved in the deal told Reuters.

Like other wealthy Gulf states Saudi Arabia has been buying farmland in Asia and Africa to secure food supplies after inflation had nearly doubled the price of food in 2008.

"We are in talks with Saudi Arabia now and we are offering them 400,000 hectares of farmland to lease on long term basis in Senegal," said the official, who declined to be named.

"Some of the land is already producing food and other parts are not and the farmers have no problems with these lease deals," he added, declining to give the value of deal or details of its location.

Buying land in countries that can barely feed themselves and exporting produce from them has exposed investors to popular unrest and political disapproval in their target countries in the developing world.

"The deals will severely undermine national food security and destroy the livelihoods of millions of farmers and pastoralists," said Devlin Kuyek a researcher at Grain, a Canadian-based NGO.

"All of this is transpiring behind closed doors with African governments and without the knowledge of the affected people or the general public," he said.

According to the contract terms being discussed, the deal will allow up to 100 percent of the food being produced on the land to be exported by the investors, the official from Senegal said.

"These deals can be very flexible because we want to attract investment," he said.

Due to limited water supplies, the kingdom plans to phase out production of all the water intensive crops that had depleted resources. The crops include wheat, soya beans and animal fodder.

Saudi needs around 2.6 million tonnes of wheat annually, and the government said last year it would rely entirely on wheat imports by 2016.

Last year, Foras International Investment Company, a group of Saudi-based investors, including the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) launched a seven-year plan worth $1 billion in Africa to reduce dependency on rice imports and supply the Middle East region.

The so-called 7X7 project aims at developing and planting 700,000 hectares of farm land to produce within 7 years 7 million tonnes of rice.

"We are in talks to acquire 150,000 to 200,000 hectares of farmland in Senegal, but the deal has not been finalized yet," said a spokesman from Foras.

"We are also looking at land in Mauritania and Benin," the spokesman added, giving no further details.

Foreign investors have acquired some 15-20 million hectares of farmland in poorer countries since 2006, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute.

Reuters

Senegal forecasts biggest peanut crop since 1975, good rice, millet harvests

by Drew Hinshaw

Senegal is expecting the 2010-2011 peanut harvest to be its most productive in 35 years and is forecasting good yields for millet and rice, the Agricultural Ministry said.

The harvest will exceed the 1.08 million metric tons of peanuts picked in the 2009-10 season, Malick Ba, head coordinator at the ministry, said yesterday in a phone interview from the capital, Dakar, without giving an estimate for the harvest. The previous season gave the highest output since 1975 when 1.2 million tons was harvested, according to agricultural ministry data.

State researchers are currently calculating the expected October-November harvest, Ba said. “It’s no longer a question of whether it will be a bigger harvest than last year’s, but a question of how much bigger it will be,” he said. The crop is picked again in April.

Peanuts account for 60 percent of Senegal’s agricultural exports, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Shipments by Suneor, the country’s biggest peanut-oil processing company, account for as much as 50 percent of the world market, according to a 2007 USDA country report.

Millet production is expected to exceed the 797,107 tons grown in 2009-2010, and rice output should be more than the 391,271 tons harvested last season, Balde Solme, bureau head for Direction for Agricultural Analysis and Forecasts, said.

The West African country’s rice output doubled between 2007 and 2009. Power outages that stop irrigation pumps in the northern rice-growing region may reduce this season’s crop, Mamour Gaye, technical adviser to the Agricultural Ministry, said on Aug. 5.

Good rains compensated for those electricity outages, Solme said.

“The main factor in determining Senegal’s agricultural output is rainfall patterns, and right now we are in a period of especially good rains that we expect will continue for several years to come,” he said.

Senegalese farms employ as much as 75 percent of the country’s workforce.


Bloomberg