When do the 'democracy' credentials of an aid-recipient government matter, and when do they not?

That much of Africa has allowed itself to get pitifully hooked on foreign aid is no secret. In recent years there has been heated discussion about this, but the aid industry is not at all threatened. Too many interested parties are involved in it on both the donor and recipient sides for that to happen.

The aspects of this mutual dependence most often discussed are how much (or how little) the aid achieves, how sustainable the ‘projects’ it funds are, whether the donors are as dependent on the relationship as the recipients and so on.

In recent years there has also been talk about linking aid to ‘human rights, democracy and good governance,’ but there is no reason to think there is any shred of seriousness about this rhetoric, if even a cursory look at some of the worlds biggest donor/recipient relationships is any indication.

Of course there are varying levels of humanitarianism in donor/recipient relationships, but there are so many other factors that feed them from both sides.

One big issue that it is taboo to talk about is that many of the people who work in the ‘non-governmental’ sector that is almost totally donor-dependent might actually be ‘donating’ much more to their countries if they were in the productive sector-farming, setting up businesses, etc. But shhh, it is politically incorrect to think this.

Recently deceased Ethiopian president Meles Zenawi was rather effective at raising donor money in the western world. However, it was notable in the generally favourable eulogies in the ‘international media’ (people who use this term almost always actually mean the western media) that there were almost none who pretended that he was a great respecter of ‘human rights, democracy and good governance.’

Zenawi’s government’s forced mass villagisation campaign has received a lot of negative coverage, but at no time did that seem to threaten to stop the foreign aid taps from gushing their largesse.

One victim of the villagisation program has tried to get recourse in an innovative way-by suing the British government’s main aid-dispensing arm. The un-named farmer has reportedly engaged British lawyers to sue the UK Department for International Development for providing part of the funding for the program in Ethiopia.

Of course the DFID denies it specifically funds any such program, which may not be the farmer’s precise point anyway. That the Ethiopian government has in place such a controversial, much criticised scheme, or that the DFID gives it generous amounts of aid are not denied.

Question: putting aside the specifics of this case, in the whole aid-and-‘human rights, democracy and good governance’ discourse, which governments are ‘good’ enough to pat on the head with aid, and which ones are so ‘bad’ that they must be slapped on the wrist by being denied it? When is a despot an alright guy, and when is a despot a very bad boy?

Looking around at the world today, there seems no clear, consistent answer to the question! Perhaps the closest answer to the riddle is ‘when the despot is our friend he is okay, when he’s not, he’s not.’

Oh well, so much for the link between aid and respect for ‘human rights, democracy and good governance.’

African Agriculture

Malawi farm inputs subsidy under strain over currency devaluation, dependence on donors

Malawi has had a much-lauded farm inputs (fertilizer, seed, chemicals) subsidy scheme for its farmers for some years now. It has been extremely successful in raising the yields of several crops. Most significantly including making the country (agriculturally, economically, politically), once famine-plagued Malawi has for several years in a row now enjoy surpluses of its staple crop, maize.

But from the beginning, there were always concerns about how long the subsidy could be sustained. It took a big chunk from Malawi's annual budget and was increasingly dependent on international donors. Then there has been the perennial debate about how subsidies distort the development of free, strong markets and how they may create a culture of expectation which could be damaging to the creation of a competitive farming sector.

In the understandable euphoria of Malawi's 'bumper harvests,' all these worries were pushed aside. But recent events have forced renewed focus on the long-term viability of the farm inputs subsidy.

Hyperinflation has significantly devalued the Malawian kwacha, meaning for the same amount of the currency, the country gets much less than before in imported goods like farm inputs. Reduced national purchasing power has reduced how many of Malawi's farmers can have access to subsidized inputs.

Then Malawi's late president Bingu Mutharika had a falling out with Britain and other major donors, causing them to show who is who by slashing their support to the country's budget. This caused Mutharika's government to scale back the reach of the subsidy scheme, while also graphically showing the inherent dangers of a programme so vulnerable to the feelings of foreign governments and institutions.


Activists who are ideologically opposed to the very idea of fertilizers might feel vindicated by the subsidy programme running out of steam in Malawi. But it is also far from obvious that the various agro-ecological  alternatives can be a direct replacement for Malawi's (or any country's) present inputs-based farming in the near-enough term to address the intersecting food security, soil fertility, political and other challenges.

There will be no quick or easy answers, but at least the discussion about the need for Malawi to look beyond its government/donor-funded inputs subsidy programme seems to have begun.

African Agriculture





       

When foreign aid, investment props up unpopular regimes

Ethiopian blogger Keffyalew Gebremedhin makes some important points about the possible pitfalls of the various efforts of foreign parties to participate in the transformation of agriculture in countries like his. He writes generally favorably about these initiatives by private investors and 'development partner' (aid), but warns that these programs' chances of success are imperiled from the start when they are instituted in countries where there  is tension between the government and significant sections of the population.

Gebremedhin tackles the recently announced plan by the G8 group of nations to target increased agricultural production in a number of African countries through supporting various private sector efforts. He points out that the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition fist in very well with the pet project of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the 'African-led' Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA.) Ethiopia is going to be one of the testing grounds for the new G8 plan announced in May by U.S.president Barack Obama.

The Ethiopian government of prime minister Meles Zenawi is considered to be an African government in good standing in Western capitals, but is the object of much more, passionately mixed feelings amongst the country's citizens   

According to Gebremedhin, there is ''huge distrust of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s regime'' by Ethiopians. Two other major concerns are ''worries about the dangers of foreign companies serving their own interests at the expense of Ethiopia’s. There is also the fear of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), crops in general and if it results in possible loss of native crops, their consequences to human health and the environment in

particular.''

He continues, ''fears have been also been repeatedly expressed if Meles Zenawi succeeds in enlisting Bill Gates, as a famous person, to provide his tyrannical regime with international approval and support.''

Of course, one person's 'tyrannical regime' may be another person's dynamic reformer. The latter seems to be the view preferred by G8, if the presence of Zenawi at the May meeting was any indication. And if Gate's foundation has any problems with the current Ethiopian government, that certainly hasn't stopped its experiments in that country. So the fear expressed by Gebremedhin that powerful foreigners are giving support and succor to a ruler he and other Ethiopians may consider a ruthless despot is almost a moot point. 

Obama, G8, Gates & Co. have no problems with Zenawi, even if many Ethiopians do. As Gebremedhin writes in answer to his own earlier expressed worry, ''In his 8 May update, Bill Gates has responded to that extolling praises on Meles Zenawi, without addressing his human rights records.''

If the international agricultural interventions in Ethiopia are generally successful, the government will inevitably benefit politically. But if they fail, the various investors will also inevitably be tarred with the brush of association with a highly controversial government. 

Mentioned several times in the article is the perceived lack of information and transparency on the government's part to the citizens. If this feeling is widespread amongst Ethiopians, it is an issue of practical concern for all involved, including foreign investors, because of the particularly emotive rise evoked by the impression that their country is being hocked out to foreigners while they helplessly look on. The recent spate of fatal armed attacks on a Saudi rice farm is an early warning sign of the depth of local unhappiness about this.

Would more information prevent such feeling? Perhaps, but not if it revealed that foreign investors (and local politicians?) really were getting a much better deal than from the new deals than the country is doing.

Gebremedhin writes, ''The problem is not about what the foreign companies could and could not do. It is about the government failing to inform the public what is underway. The problem with this is that rightly or wrongly all companies may end up being associated with the regime, as its promoters and bank rollers it and its Machiavellian approaches, especially the end justifies the means the prime minister employs. In a country where the excesses of government have reached astounding levels, such reaction is inevitable and may impede the companies’ activities.''

Complicating the issue is that into the information vacuum have stepped in foreign NGOs and non-profits. These have tended to paint the wave of land/farming investment deals in Ethiopia in negative, sometimes even calamitous terms. In the absence of clear information from their own government, it is hardly surprising that a sense builds up amongst many Ethiopians that both the foreign investors and their own government have only contempt for their concerns. One result is that the various agricultural schemes are greeted by automatic cynicism and resentment, rather than on any merits they may have. 

His blog post is somewhat rambling, but Gebremedhin brings up important points that should occupy both the Ethiopian government, foreign investors and 'development partners' but probably don't, with consequences that will only become clear in the coming years.    

Given the wealth of information that there now is particularly about how not to engage in 'development,' it is astonishing how people who really should know better keep on sabotaging by poor implementation what might otherwise be very good plans. How a plan is perceived can be as important to its success as how well it is conceived or funded.  

African Agriculture 

    

   

Controlling seeds, first link in food-chain: U.S.aid policy mandates use of GM technologies

by Nidhi Tandon


Thanks to the US’s 2009 Global Food Security Act, food aid policy for the first time mandates the use of genetic modification technologies. Nidhi Tandon looks at how this legislation helps biotechnology companies monopolise the seed industry at the expense of farmers, and explores some of the dubious links between these corporations, the Gates Foundation and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.

In March 2009, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed its Global Food Security Act (SB 384). The legislation, known as the Lugar-Casey Act, aims to focus on longer-term agricultural development, and restructure aid agencies to better respond to crises. Funding for agricultural development – some US$7.7 billion worth – would be directed in large part to genetically modified crop research.[1] In other words, food aid policy for the first time mandates the use of genetic modification technologies. Engineered crops will need engineered seeds – seeds that are no longer a result of natural cross-pollination.

full article...Pambazuka

Rumpus over GM food aid

Genetically modified (GM) food aid bound for Africa has long been a bone of contention among governments, scientists, activists, consumers and aid workers.

 On 18 August a drought-affected Kenyan government fired the head of its National Biosafety Authority for expediting the process to import milled food aid which might have contained genetically modified organisms (GMO). In the weeks preceding and after the incident, public debate on the issue was distorted by extreme positions either for or against GM food.

“When you have people starving in your country you don’t simply turn  your back on food at your door-step just because it is labelled GM – it is expected that biosafety risk assessments should have been conducted before the importation of the food to see whether it does indeed pose a threat before taking a decision. Taking this decision so late in the day  could have serious consequences for the suffering people,” says Diran

Makinde, director of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development’s (NEPAD’s) African Biosafety Network of Expertise (ABNE), a pool of scientific experts set up by the African Union.

There have been different degrees of resistance to GM food and GM food aid in Africa.

In 2002 Zambia announced it would not accept GM food aid in any form. Positions were polarized to a great extent after a US state department official said, “Beggars can’t be choosers.”

It prompted the then president, Levy Mwanawasa, to say hunger was no reason for feeding his people “poison.” Since then Zambia has become a poster-child for the anti-GM lobby.

Zimbabwe, Malawi and Mozambique say they could allow imports of GM food aid

 in its milled form, as this eliminated the risk of the germination of whole grains and limited possible contamination of local varieties.

Lesotho and Swaziland allowed the distribution of non-milled GM food/grains, but warned people that it was for consumption not cultivation.

In 2004, Angola and Sudan announced restrictions on GM food aid. Most African countries approach GM technology applied to crops with caution.

“Why shouldn’t we be wary of this technology and its possible long-term health impacts, if the EU [European Union] is. If it is not good for them, why should it be good for us?” said Tewolde Egziabher, Ethiopia’s director of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Egziabher was one of the main architects of the Cartagena Protocol, the international law on biosafety which came into effect in 2003 and which allows countries to impose bans on foods containing GM.

The Protocol’s cornerstone is “precaution,” notes a UN Environment Programme briefing. It gives governments the discretion to impose bans even where there is

insufficient scientific evidence about the potential adverse effects of GM crops. The USA has yet to ratify the Protocol.

GM technology inserts foreign genes into a crop that can improve its appearance, taste, nutritional quality, drought tolerance, and insect and disease resistance. There has been cautious optimism about the new technology in some quarters.

“As crop yields drop because of weather shocks, GM technology is not the panacea, as Africa will feel the impact of climate change in the long-term. But it is potentially yet another tool in our fight to improve production,” said Per Pinstrup-Andersen, 2001 World Food Prize laureate and the author of a book on the politics of GM food.

Most critics of GM food, however, argue that foreign genes can produce toxic proteins and allergens, even possibly transfer the genes to bacteria in the human gut; or transfer these traits to other crops with unknown consequences.

A deep mistrust also prevails in Africa, given the fact that two power blocs - the EU and the USA remain divided over GM. Only one strain of GM maize, Monsanto 810, and one modified potato, have been approved in the EU, and most countries grow neither commercially. Spain accounts for about 80 percent of GMO grown in the EU in terms of land under cultivation, but Austria, France, Greece, Hungary, Germany and Luxembourg have banned all GMO cultivation.

On the other hand, in the USA, where 70 percent of maize is GM, GM food need not be labelled. Some food experts say both the EU and the USA have vested interests in promoting their respective views in Africa, which is seen as a potential market and supplier of either GM or non-GM products.

In Africa, the production of GM food is still in its infancy. South Africa (70-80 percent of its maize, soya and cotton production), Egypt (maize) and Burkina Faso (cotton) are the only African countries commercially producing GM crops, according to ABNE.

Traditionally the USA has been the biggest donor in kind to the World Food Programme (WFP). But the aid agency is trying to broaden its source of food aid. In 2010, WFP said 36 percent of its food aid, or two million out of 5.7 million tons disbursed globally, was procured in developing countries.

While wheat accounts for more than 50 percent of WFP’s global cereal component, GM wheat does not figure as it is not grown commercially.

According to data from 2006, at least 38 percent of cereal food aid to Africa was wheat and wheat flour, said Christopher Barrett, a food aid expert. Though wheat tends to be a less important part of the African diet than maize, aid agencies

sometimes offer wheat instead of GM maize in emergencies.

Milling the grain is an obvious solution, said Julia Steets, an aid policy expert at the Global Public Policy Institute.

"Milling either at source or in the port of arrival or in the prepositioning warehouses -

it would of course also help to know in advance which governments take what positions on that, so that the food aid agencies are prepared."

"The stance of recipient countries has to be respected. When a country prohibits GMO, sourcing alternative commodities and routes can “obviously impact delivery times and costs but those are the parameters in which we work,” said David Orr, WFP spokesman. “We always abide by the laws and regulations of recipient countries.”

If a country is not receptive to GM food - “give the country the money for procurement of the food from an African country with a surplus (local procurement is better than shipping food all the way from the US any way),” said Pinstrup-Andersen.

Food aid agencies in Africa usually turn to South Africa for surplus maize. The country has systems in place to segregate non-GM from GM, says Thom Jayne, professor of international development at Michigan State University.

Farmers in South Africa certify non-GM content by conducting a basic test, which detects specific proteins produced by a GM plant. The non-GM grain is separated from the rest before being shipped.

Another way of separating GM from non-GM crops involves contract-farming schemes first set up in 2004-2005. The process involves the purchaser identifying farmers who buy non-GM seed. Tests are conducted on their field for any traces of GM before they are offered a contract.

But all these measures involve extra costs.

In 2001 the African Union drafted the African Biosafety Model Law but taking an even more cautious approach than the Protocol, allowing countries to adopt more stringent measures to assess the safety of GM food.

National biosafety laws exist in 17 of the 54 African countries. In most countries, the legislation is a work-in-progress.

Labelling and verifying the content of a crop on a day-to day basis is an outstanding issue. South Africa, the first country in Africa to put biosafety laws in place (in 1997), has yet to develop a labelling process.

More public education and debate around GM food needs to happen, said Pinstrup-Andersen. “Almost all GM-food varieties have been through stringent testing for health safety, which non-GM food has not undergone ever. People need to engage with the science and not the politics.”

IRINnews

   

Aid methods work against agriculture in West Africa

International charity Oxfam said September 9 that donors have failed to reform the way they give aid to agriculture in West Africa, criticising short-term, badly coordinated projects that cost millions.

Releasing a report in Dakar, Oxfam's regional agricultural campaign director Samira Daoud said despite commitments by big donors to reform the way they give aid, projects contiue to be carried out in an ineffective fashion.

After the food crisis of 2008 international donors realised they had to focus on agriculture and food security, and pledged $22 billion over three years during the G8-summit in Aquila, Italy in 2009.

However the Oxfam report 'Aid Coordination and Alignment: Myth or Reality' released in Dakar, said only 22 percent of this had been disbursed by July 2011, and promises to reform the way aid is given, to make it more effective, have not materialised.

As an example, Oxfam said, USAID in Ghana has a project called 'Feed the Future' which seeks to strengthen local producers. But it also runs a programme called 'Food for Peace' where surplus American food is distributed to the populace.

"This is totally contradictory, if you distribute American food in Ghana you are disturbing the market of Ghanaian producers. There are many examples like this where donors are not really consistent in the same country or sector."

The report, which studied aid programmes in Niger, Burkina Faso and Ghana, spoke of "a host of short-term, poorly coordinated projects, leading to high running costs and lost opportunities for the countries receiving the aid."

AFP

Poor farmers no threat to U.S. agribusiness; they will become its customers: Howard Buffet

by Howard Buffet

The reasoning would almost be comical if it were not life-threatening to millions of people. James Henry, the Chairman of the USA Maritime coalition, recently expressed concern that poor farmers in less developed countries could threaten revenues of companies like ADM or Liberty Maritime Corp because of a program called Purchase for Progress (P4), initiated by the World Food Programme (WFP).

These industries face a larger threat from increased commodity prices that have slashed U.S. food aid. In 2005, the U.S. provided 4,233,000 metric tons of food assistance; in 2010, it provided 2,914,401 metric tons, a 32 percent reduction. It is simple math; when corn and wheat double in price, the U.S. government buys less to send to disasters such as what is occurring in the Horn of Africa.

For the past three years I have called for a doubling of our country's commitment to food assistance just to stay even with our historical giving levels. Even this falls short of meeting the demand created by drought, floods, disease and earthquakes. With a billion people going to bed hungry every night and another billion on the edge of food insecurity, it is difficult to believe that we will run out of opportunities for Mr. Henry's coalition to meet its revenue targets.

It is also hard to imagine large U.S. companies being threatened by poor, small-scale farmers trying to feed their families and pull themselves out of poverty. P4P is the most innovative program I have seen; it is consistent with a business approach to solving poverty -- something most CEOs of U.S. companies would and should applaud. As a businessman, it is the type of approach that I have searched for to incorporate into our charitable work. To date, it is the largest single investment our Foundation has made -- and it is likely to become the largest overall, second only to our water programs.

P4P provides training, access to credit and market access for poor farmers. The objective is to use WFP's buying power as an interim step. It is expected that farmers will eventually forgo sales to WFP and in the future sell to companies who operate in their country like ADM, Bunge, Cargill, Maseaca or Tiger brands.

Once these farmers learn about contracts, quality requirements and delivery obligations while building a credit rating, they have found a permanent way out of poverty. They can eat three meals a day and send their children to school. After a decade of funding 100 agricultural projects in 37 countries, P4P addresses two key concerns I have as a funder: it provides a permanent exit strategy for donor or aid dollars and it can be executed at scale.

One point that seems to be missing in this discussion is that as countries work their way out of poverty, increase their GDP and overall wealth, they become consumers of goods produced from countries such as the U.S. Their purchasing power increases and they import our products -- creating U.S. jobs and sustaining our industries, not threatening them, as Mr. Henry suggests. The idea that our strategy should be to keep people hungry and malnourished so we can ship them our commodities is absurd.

I have personally seen the successes of P4P and talked with farmers who have had their lives transformed as a result of the program. I realize that stock options and profit are important to many of us in the corporate world, but I do not believe it is an either-or situation, and profit should not ride on the backs of hungry people. I think we can continue to do quite well in spite of these farmers increasing their income by a few hundred dollars a year. Of course, it is easy to say -- neither Mr. Henry nor I have ever suffered from periods of hunger and we put our children to bed every night with full stomachs.

Huffington Post

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Warren Buffett's son is super-wrong about food aid to Africa

 

Food aid: U.S agribusiness, shipping interests vs. local sourcing

In an emergency session in Rome on July 25, the United Nations called for $1.6 billion in aid to stop a famine in Somalia. In next-door Ethiopia, Abebech Toga, was trying to help the Horn of Africa feed itself. Toga, a farmer in her 30s, is a designated trainer for a United Nations program called Purchase for Progress. She teaches fellow farmers to time corn and coffee sales to get better market prices, to reduce moisture in harvested crops so higher- quality products result, and other skills.

Purchase for Progress is the signature program of Josette Sheeran, who served in the U.S. State Department under President George W. Bush before running the UN’s World Food Program, the globe’s biggest food-aid agency. When she joined the WFP in 2007, she looked for new ways to combat famine.

“What we began to ask,” says Sheeran, “is how do we purchase in a way that helps it be a solution to hunger?”

She says the WFP found the answer in what’s called P4P, which uses the agency’s buying power to integrate the world’s poorest farmers into the global food economy. The drawback is that if the model takes off, some Americans could lose their jobs.

For decades, rich countries bought their own farmers’ surplus crops — usually from giant grain traders such as Archer Daniels Midland Co. — and shipped them to countries facing famine and drought. This eased crises while failing to build a sustainable farm economy locally. In the 1990s the WFP began buying food in regions closer to famine-struck areas, mainly from large agribusinesses in Africa and Asia.


Under the P4P experiment, which Sheeran describes as part of a food-aid “revolution,” small farmers get a guaranteed customer as well as a clearly set price — a benefit U.S. growers have enjoyed since the first U.S. crop futures exchange opened 160 years ago in Chicago.

With P4P staffers guiding the transactions, the WFP agrees to buy grain and other crops from these farmers. The contract helps growers become better credit risks so they can take out loans to buy yield-boosting seeds and fertilizers. Specialists train them in how to make their goods appealing to other buyers such as local hospitals and schools.

Ultimately, the goal is for the WFP to exit the stage as farmers find other regular customers. The UN says that the five- year pilot project has given more than 500,000 farmers in 20 countries lessons in boosting yields and securing credit.


In Uganda, farmers received one-third more income when their corn quality improved; in South Sudan, food from small farmers sustained people fleeing attacks by the Lord’s Resistance Army, a paramilitary group.

The program, now undergoing a UN-commissioned midpoint evaluation, says it has put $30 million in the pockets of poor farmers. It’s testing different approaches, working with farmers in some places and small food processors in others.

Although it will never fully replace rich-world donations or handle dire emergencies by itself, P4P adds another element to the “toolbox” of fighting hunger, says Sheeran.

Where things could get sticky for her is in the support she gets from the U.S. government. P4P has received U.S. aid since its start in 2008, when a surge in food prices prompted a search for new solutions to the problem of world hunger.

Most of the more than $35 million the U.S. has committed to P4P goes to buying food from local farmers. Other donors include the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the governments of Europe and Canada. P4P, says Buffett, is “the best way we can address hunger and poverty.”

The intense pressure to cut U.S. government spending makes American funding for P4P and other local food purchase programs vulnerable, says Gawain Kripke, director of policy and research for Oxfam America, the U.S. arm of the global aid group. Kripke says the traditional players in U.S. food aid aren’t doing enough to help small farmers join the system.

“Commodity and shipping interests are more concerned with using taxpayer dollars to pad their profits than in seeing U.S. assistance used efficiently,” he says. “Congress has been unwilling to break this stranglehold.”

In July the U.S. House subcommittee that controls foreign-aid spending decided to roll back its overseas development account, which includes P4P dollars, by 20 percent.

“This could severely reduce funding available for critical long-term food security and agricultural development programs,” said Rick Leach, chief executive officer of WFP USA, a Washington-based advocate for the World Food Program.


The argument for the traditional approach is that the U.S. government’s practice of buying from ADM and others, then shipping the grain on U.S. ships, generates jobs. Donating U.S. food maintains about 33,000 shipping-related jobs and keeps the domestic merchant marine available for defense needs, according to USA Maritime, a coalition of shipping companies and maritime unions.

Those programs “are a proven and effective approach to getting food to the world’s hungry,” says James Henry, the group’s chairman, via e-mail. If local food purchases really took off, U.S. companies such as ADM and Liberty Maritime Corp., a Lake Success, New York-based shipper, could lose about $1 billion a year in revenue, according to a U.S. Agriculture Department breakdown of commodity-aid contracts.

U.S. support for food aid would wither if the bulk of the funds shifted toward buying directly from farmers in famine- prone regions, says John Gillcrist, former chairman of the North American Millers’ Association. His own company, Bartlett Milling Co., has sold grain to aid programs.


Aid agencies and shippers are cutting delivery times and warehousing more food near famine-prone areas, so there’s no reason to tinker with a successful model, Gillcrist says. ADM referred questions on food aid to the millers’ group.

Sheeran’s supporters say farmers such as Toga deserve the chance to help break the cycle of famine.

“We have relied too much on taking our commodities and responding to emergency after emergency,” says Representative James McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts. “We should be encouraging local sustainability.”

Sitting in her mud-walled home, Toga puts it simply: “We want to be better farmers.”

Bloomberg 

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Warren Buffett's son is super-wrong about food aid to Africa

by Tom Philpott

My post on the organic-farming surge in Gaza got me thinking about ag-development policy—and how what's happening in occupied Palestine goes against the grain, so to speak, of most efforts to bolster farming is distressed areas.

Responding to immediate needs for food in a place where water is scarce, agrichemicals are hard to come by, and trade is severely limited, aid agencies and local policymakers in Gaza are urging farmers to grow food for themselves and their neighbors to eat using water-efficient, low-input techniques. And what they're growing isn't industrial crops like corn and soy, which need to be subjected to heavy processing before they can be eaten, but rather nutrient-dense, ready-to-consume fruit, vegetables, and fish.

How different is this setup from the norm? An example recently crossed my desk in the form of this Huffington Post item by Howard Buffett, son of gazillionaire Warren. Now, Buffet the younger is not your standard trust fund baby. According to his bio, he owns and operates a 1,240-acre corn-and-soy farm in Illinois and manages another 400-acre farm in Nebraska. His farming efforts have netted him ample federal crop subsidies over the years. In the early 1990s, he worked as an executive and board member for grain-trading and processing giant Archer Daniels Midland. He recently joined the board of directors at Coca-Cola.

But Buffett mainly occupies himself as a philanthropist, putting some of his family's ample wealth to work in various ag-related projects in Africa. As a 2009 Wall Street Journal article shows, Buffet takes a highly engaged, hands-on approach to his development work...

Now, I by no means intend to question Buffet's motives for working in Africa. The Journal portrays him as a tireless fighter against hunger, and I don't doubt it. But considering that US philanthropists are increasingly setting the agenda for agriculture development in Africa—the biggest player of all is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to which Howard Buffett's father has given billions—it's not unfair to question his vision for change.

In the HuffPo piece, Buffet lays it out. The broad argument he makes is not objectionable. He is defending a perfectly sensible program within the UN's World Food Program (WFP) called Purchase for Progress, which turns traditional food aid on its head. In the old system, the UN would alleviate hunger by taking money from donor governments like the United States and using it to buy grain and other ag commodities from US and European farmers; it would then distribute the food to people facing extreme hunger. Purchase for Progress shakes that paradigm up by buying the food from farmers in the global south—thus alleviating hunger and pumping money into the ag economy in one swoop.

US shipping interests have lashed out at Purchase for Progress on the grounds that it cuts them—as well as large US grain traders like Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill—out of the (quite profitable) supply chain for food aid. The argument is monstrous; it's short form might read: "We transnational corporations demand a cut of the money intended to alleviate the hunger of desperately poor people."

So here's Buffet's response to the shipping industry's demand for its cut of the aid action:

[Purchase for Progress] provides training, access to credit and market access for poor farmers. The objective is to use WFP's buying power as an interim step. It is expected that farmers will eventually forgo sales to WFP and in the future sell to companies who operate in their country like ADM, Bunge, Cargill, Maseca [the Mexican corn-flour giant part-owned by ADM], or Tiger brands. Once these farmers learn about contracts, quality requirements and delivery obligations while building a credit rating, they have found a permanent way out of poverty. They can eat three meals a day and send their children to school.

So according to Buffett, the goal of development policy for African farmers is to get them to scale up to the point where they can sell industrial commodity crops to the globe's big grain buyers. When they do, there will be another benefit for western transnationals:

One point that seems to be missing in this discussion is that as countries work their way out of poverty, increase their GDP and overall wealth, they become consumers of goods produced from countries such as the US. Their purchasing power increases and they import our products—creating US jobs and sustaining our industries…

Now, critics of industrial agriculture like me are often dismissed as pie-eyed idealists. But this is pie-eyed idealism. To get big enough to sell profitably to massive companies like ADM, farmers will have to scale up, buy annual doses of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and high-tech seeds (another boon to US companies that Buffett could have mentioned), and invest in massive machines. All of that requires taking on vast amounts of debt, which makes farm operations extremely vulnerable.

Indeed, the path to prosperity promoted by Buffett actually leads to desolation in farm country. The United States provides a telling case study. As our agriculture began to scale up and industrialize after World War II, farms began to close at the rate of hundreds of thousands per year as input prices rose and crop prices fell...

True, the surviving farmers have managed to become the prosperous consumers of corporate goods that Buffett envisions. But it's worth noting that the incomes of large-scale US commodity farmers are propped up by two significant government programs: crop subsidies and biofuel mandates. (Buffett is also an ardent corn ethanol booster). It's hard to imagine the government of, say, Ghana coming up with similar largess.

The more vexing question, of course, is what happens to the millions of farmers who would be forced off of the land in Buffett's vision of industrial agriculture for Africa. In the postwar United States, a manufacturing boom greeted former farmers and their offspring, giving them ample opportunity to join the middle class. As Nick Cullather shows in his recent book, The Hungry World—which I reviewed here—things went rather differently in Mexico and India when their farmers turned to industrial agriculture in the postwar years. Some of them gained manufacturing jobs, but millions were forced into chronic poverty in urban shantytowns.

I fear something similar will happen in Africa if Buffett's aspirations come to pass. And I keep thinking about the contrast with what's happening in Gaza: the push to grow food for hungry people to eat, not industrial crops to be bought and processed by transnationals. I wonder if Gaza, cut off from global agribusiness, might be in the process of developing an approach to agriculture that actually works for farmers and their surrounding communities.

Mother Jones

Directly related articles:

Food aid: U.S agribusiness, shipping interests vs. local sourcing

Poor farmers no threat to U.S. agribusiness; they will become its customers: Howard Buffet

Howard Buffet mischaracterizes our position on food aid: USA Maritime

Howard Buffet mischaracterizes our position on food aid: USA Maritime

While we share Mr. Buffett's goal of feeding the world's hungry, his post completely mischaract
­erizes the Coalition'­s position. For the benefit of his readers, we offer the full statement that was provided to Bloomberg for its July 28 story, and we ask that Mr. Buffett retract his false characteri­zations of our organizati­on:

“The United States’ in-kind internatio­nal food aid programs are a proven and effective approach to getting food to the world’s hungry, sustaining long-term developmen­t programs, and helping to drive the American economy here at home.

“The Food for Peace program has achieved what few programs can: it has provided food aid to 3 billion people globally and is now the fastest provider of food assistance according to USAID, secures jobs for 44,000 Americans annually, and supports a national defense sealift infrastruc­ture that saves our country’s military more than $65 billion in capital and infrastruc­ture costs.

“As food prices continue to rise and a growing number of countries work to overcome hunger and regional instabilit­y, we welcome opportunit­ies to work together on improvemen­ts to these essential programs.”

The Coalition has long been a supporter of continued food aid funding, which has seen continual and disproport­ionate funding cuts since 2008. More informatio­n about the Coalition'­s position on food aid funding can be found at http://www­.usamariti­me.org/fun­ding.php


...from comments section of Howard Buffet's Huffington Post article

Directly related articles:
 
Food aid: U.S agribusiness, shipping interests vs. local sourcing
 
Poor farmers no threat to U.S. agribusiness; they will become its customers: Howard Buffet
 
Warren Buffett's son is super-wrong about food aid to Africa

'Britain's foreign aid could fund UK-based research on GM crops for drought-ridden Africa'

The UK government is increasing foreign aid payments but is this aid solving a problem or just prolonging it? Whilst some of the aid does go towards in-country projects, too often this does not deliver sustainable improvements, or worse, it lines the pockets of dictators. At the same time, cuts in government spending in agricultural research are now threatening our technology base.

"We should counter this by diverting some of our growing overseas aid payments into UK-based research towards developing GM crops resistant to drought, heat, pests and diseases," advises British Crop Production Council’s chairman, Dr Colin Ruscoe. "This would provide sustainable solutions in famine-prone parts of the world. At the same time, we can use these technology platforms to target key UK crops – wheat, potatoes and oilseed rape."

A recent statement of the UK Government’s policy on GM crops in England highlighted the benefits of GM technology in agriculture. This position is, among other things, based on the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) ruling which shows that there is "no scientific evidence associating GM plants with higher risks for the environment – or for food and feed safety – than (from) conventional plants and organisms".

"The European Parliament is now proposing to allow member states to disregard EFSA advice and ban the cultivation of GM crops for non-scientific reasons, quoting ’socio-economic factors", says Dr Ruscoe. "This is driven by political agendas rather than science, threatens the single market and discourages EU and UK scientific research. It also inhibits European private sector investment in agricultural biotechnology development and commercialisation. As a result EU food production is not benefitting from GMO traits."

Meanwhile, the benefits of GM technology are being appreciated in other parts of the world. In 2010, 15 million farmers planted around 150 million hectares of GM crops worldwide – thirty times the cropped area of the UK. The US and South America, Canada and China are now reaping these benefits, with India soon to follow.

Whilst EU Member States can ban GM crops on unscientific grounds, the UK is sensibly choosing not to. "We should exploit this competitive advantage," says Dr Ruscoe. "Originally the UK led the way in GM research ¬– particularly in agricultural biotechnology – and it still has important centres of excellence in this field, at the John Innes centre, NIAB, Rothamsted Research and Newcastle University. So, whilst the rest of the EU remains paralysed, the UK should again take the lead in researching traits – using GM and other plant breeding technologies."

"By targeting foreign aid into areas where it will have a sustainable impact in developing countries, and by exploiting our world class research base to provide appropriate technologies that improve food production and UK commercial competitiveness, we surely achieve a win-win situation," says Dr Ruscoe.

Farming UK

Britain stops fertilizer subsidy support to Malawi

by Mabvuto Banda

Britain has cut financial support for a highly successful seed and fertiliser programme in Malawi, the latest round in a spiralling diplomatic dispute between London and the impoverished southern African nation.

Malawi's former colonial master has also suspended visa-free travel for President Bingu wa Mutharika, his wife, and other top officials pending a "review" of bilateral ties, High Commission political officer Lewis Kulisewa told Reuters.

Britain said last month it was freezing aid worth $550 million over the next four years following the spat, which started with a leaked cable that described Mutharika as "autocratic and intolerant of criticism".

It had been unclear whether the Farm Inputs Subsidy Programme (FISP), as the fertiliser scheme was called, was included in the suspension given the huge benefits it has brought to thousands of Malawian farmers and the wider economy.

"New aid commitments are on hold while this review takes place and the 2011/2012 FISP is part of this," the Department of International Development (DfID), Britain's aid arm, said in an e-mailed response to a query.

The programme, which provides subsidies to small farmers, has been in place since 2004 and has boosted harvests in a country that has historically suffered from food shortages.

In the last four years, Britain has spent $20 million on the programme.

Malawi has already announced that this year it will only import 90,000 tonmes of fertilizer, half of last year's amount.

The number of farmers under the programme is also expected to be reduced from the 1.6 million families that have benefited from the subsidy, so hunger could increase in rural areas.

Malawi is expected to harvest 3.8 million tonnes of maize this year, up from 3.5 million the previous year, despite some dry periods during the year.

Growing harvests have helped annual economic growth to average a brisk 7 percent in the last five years and contain inflation to single digits. Food accounts for 58 percent of the consumer price index.

Reflecting the aid freeze, the finance ministry is planning a budget based on zero funding from the foreign donors that have typically provided 40 percent of government revenues -- a ploy derided by some newspapers as a "time bomb" that could trigger an uprising against Mutharika.

"Let us stop the charade and accept that we are, at best, undertaking an exercise in futility," the Maravi Post newspaper said in an editorial. "

Reuters

Why Ghana gave in to the cocoa baron

by Cameron Duodu

I read ‘British Constitution’ for my A-levels in the University of London General Certificate of Education (GCE) examination. I studied part-time, because I was in full-time employment at the Ghana Broadcasting System (as it was then).

But help was at hand – the University of Ghana’s Extra-Mural Studies Department, headed by a very nice Englishman called David Kimble, had assembled an excellent group of lecturers who lectured us free of charge, at 5pm Monday to Friday, depending on the subject one chose. Bishop’s Girls’ School, at High Street, in Accra, was where my particular set of lectures were organised, under the auspices of an excellent adult education body called ‘The People’s Educational Association’ (PEA).

There, I was introduced to such mysteries as the difference between ‘written law’ and ‘convention’. Some of it seemed rather abstruse: I mean how was a ‘convention’ expected to hold so strong in any society that the convention would be enforced, through the magic of sheer self-regulation, by the rulers and the opposition alike? Yet we were assured it did work, one of the best examples being the position of the Speaker of the House of Commons, who is elected by the whole House from the ranks of the majority party, and yet, once elected, becomes an ‘impartial’ chairman of the debating process. Convention, embodied in a book called ‘Erskine May’ for short (after its author) obliged the Speaker to be scrupulous in allowing equal time for government and opposition to speak and take part, generally, in the business of ‘The House’, on as equal a basis as was practicable.

Another ‘convention’ that we were taught was that ministers of the crown, although legally the nominal ‘masters’ of the (unelected) civil servants, were yet expected to restrain themselves from asking civil servants to do anything that was ‘not proper’. Some sort of ‘ministerial code’ existed, we were told, which governed ‘proper’ relations between ministers and civil servants.

In Ghana, which was expected to follow British democratic practices after independence, these rules were written down in a huge guide called ‘General Orders’, and the more curious of us often looked at it, but to very little effect. At Broadcasting House, for instance, the ‘General Orders’ resided on the desk of a guy called ‘Mr Crabbe’, who had been at Broadcasting House ‘forever’, and would tell you that you could not go on leave twice in a year, if you dared ask for time off. If you protested, he would just mumble ‘General Orders!’ to you and off you would trot to sulk in private.

What a minister – in charge of the Broadcasting budget – could or could not do was hardly ever our problem: The minister would phone the director of broadcasting, the director would phone the head of news, and an offending item would mysteriously disappear from the news bulletins. Or be modified. No questions asked. And so it went on.

But then, the BBC men who were director-general of broadcasting and head of news in my time, soon left. And some ministers began to phone in to the news desk directly, with any complaints they might have. Very soon – in 1960, to be exact – we had men from the ruling Convention People’s Party (CPP) installed everywhere. In the newsroom, we had no less a personage than Kodwo Addison (who was later to become director of the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute, Winneba) installed as an ultra-establishment ‘news and current affairs executive’. Censor, if you cut out the euphemisms.

Addison had to append his signature to every news item we were to broadcast before it went on the air. Often, he came late to the newsroom and we would be twiddling our fingers as the news bulletins we had assiduously assembled, lay there waiting for him, while the clock ticked towards news time.

If we had known the reality that lay behind British politics, perhaps we would not have grieved too much. For the British appear to have effectively jettisoned some of those very nice, unwritten rules that guide the relationships between politicians and civil servants. If you read the memoirs of top politicians and civil servants, you will find that some civil servants carry out, or even initiate, actions meant to benefit the political careers of the ministers they serve.

The British newspaper, the Sunday Times, has just given the world an insight into what is currently happening to some of these relationships. The paper revealed, in its issue of 31 October 2010, that the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, at the instance of the minister of international development, got the British high commissioner in Accra, a civil servant, to lobby the Ghana government over a case in which an employee of a private British cocoa-buying firm called Armajaro, was caught smuggling cocoa from the Western region of Ghana to the Ivory Coast. The smuggling operation was uncovered by a very brave Ghanaian investigative journalist, Anas Aremeyaw Anas, who has won several international awards for solid investigative journalism.

The Sunday Times reports that in early July 2010, Andrew Mitchell, British secretary of state for international development, was passed a three-page letter from a donor who had given money to Mitchell’s Conservative Party. The letter was from Anthony Ward, a commodities trader known in British business circles as ‘Chocfinger’ (an allusion to the James Bond movie villain, Goldfinger) for his audacious deals in the cocoa market. (Instead of gold, his specialty was in the commodity used for chocolate, hence ‘Chocfinger’).

Ward was aggrieved. His company had been banned from the Western Region of Ghana, after one of its contractors was caught in a smuggling sting. There had been efforts by local British diplomats to end the ban, but Ward wanted the clout of a government minister. ‘We therefore would like to ask you to intervene on our behalf at presidential level [in Ghana] to request the ban be lifted with immediate effect,’ Ward’s letter to the minister said.

‘With immediate effect!’ As if Ghana was still a British colony which would dance to the tune of a British minister, like African civilians taking orders from military rulers, after one of our numerous and nefarious coups d‘etat!

Ward’s letter suggested that one potential lobbying opportunity would be a UK-Ghana investment forum in London which the Ghanaian vice-president, Mr John Mahama, was due to attend.

Ward’s name was familiar to Mitchell (the Sunday Times reveals). His company had donated £40,000 to Mr Mitchell’s office. It had also donated £50,000 to the Conservative party separately.

The Sunday Times adds: ‘Just days after Mitchell read the letter, the Ghanaian vice-president was indeed lobbied on behalf of Ward’s company by a Foreign Office minister at a dinner on the eve of the trade forum. Mitchell now faces questions about his exact role in the fast-tracked decision to put a government minister into battle for the company, Armajaro Holdings.

‘Mitchell’s intervention is the first apparent conflict of interest for a [David Cameron-headed] coalition government minister. Ward, 50, is a co-founder of Armajaro, one of the world’s largest cocoa commodity traders. With estimated wealth of £36m, he was reported to have cornered a chunk of the [international cocoa] market, buying 240,100 tons of cocoa beans for £658m. He is believed to have taken delivery of the cocoa at the start of July, at about the time he sought Mitchell’s aid.

‘The matter raised by Ward involved British business interests overseas, which meant it was outside Mitchell’s remit. But after considering the contents of the letter, he called Nicholas Westcott, the British high commissioner to Ghana.

‘Armajaro’s problems can be traced back to last April when an undercover reporter [Anas Aremeyaw Anas] exposed a smuggling epidemic from Ghana to Ivory Coast involving security officials and cocoa companies.

A contractor for Armajaro Ghana offered to buy cocoa to be smuggled to Ivory Coast, where prices can be significantly higher. The Ghanaian government sets a fixed cocoa price for its farmers.

‘In his conversation with Westcott on July 6, Mitchell immediately declared his interest in the donations from Ward. Westcott assured him he had already raised the matter with Ghanaian officials.

‘Westcott confirmed the details in Ward’s letter about a forthcoming UK-Ghana trade forum in London. He said the matter could possibly be raised by Henry Bellingham, [the British minister at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.]’

Despite some initial misgivings about lobbying for Armajaro, officials eventually concluded that Mr Bellingham should raise the matter. He dined with Mr Mahama on the eve of the trade forum and, after briefings from officials, lobbied him on Armajaro’s behalf. Westcott too attended the UK-Ghana trade forum at Drapers’ Hall in the City of London, and also took the opportunity to lobby on Armajaro’s behalf.

According to the Sunday Times, ‘the campaign paid dividends. On July 12 Westcott reported in an internal memo [obtained by the Sunday Times under the Freedom of Information Act] that the Ghanaian vice-president was going to look into the ban ‘immediately’. In August, Westcott, knowing Mitchell’s interest, wrote to Mitchell’s department: ‘I raised the urgent need to (and advantages of) raising the ban on Armajaro purchasing cocoa in Ghana’s border region.’ He said a draft decision made by the [Ghana] Cocoa [Marketing] Board lifting the ban meant the matter should soon be ‘sorted’.

And indeed, writes the Sunday Times, ‘The ban was finally lifted in September [2010], except in the district where the smuggling originated.’

Of course, consciences, such as existed, were salved all round by regarding ‘the employee, a contractor who was exposed offering to help to buy cocoa for the undercover reporter in western Ghana, as a rogue operator’. Yes, they are always ‘one bad apple’, aren’t they? But even it was one bad apple, did convention allow that the company that should be held responsible for his actions – for failing to put adequate measures in place to ensure that cocoa its agents bought in Ghana was not smuggled into the Ivory Coast to increase that country’s exports as against those of Ghana, and undoubtedly, the export duty arising out of the smuggled cocoa exports?

A DFID spokesman told the Sunday Times that ‘The letter from Armajaro was dealt with in accordance with normal ministerial procedures’.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, for its part. insisted to the paper that ‘it had not fast- tracked Ward’s request for help.’

If Mr Mahama is reading this, he ought to ask himself whether the Ghana high commissioner in London could equally intervene with the British government on behalf of a Ghanaian company involved in denying Britain of potential export receipts. Then he should also ask to be briefed on the activities of hedge funds, such as Armajaro. If Mr Mahama doesn’t know, such hedge funds are among the companies whose activities ensure that Ghana’s earnings from cocoa fluctuate on the world market. They can be so harmful to any economy that after the great banking collapse of 2008-9, even the free trade adherents in the West sought to impose controls on their activities.

Armajaro, in particular, is of great relevance to us in Ghana, for it is so expert at manipulating the cocoa market that it could even be accused of industrial espionage, no less. According to reports by authoritative British publications, its CEO, Mr Ward, sends experts into cocoa farms in West Africa ‘to count the pods’ on cocoa trees, so as to aggregate the yield and thereby be able to forecast the eventual size of each country’s crop accurately. Such an accurate forecast enables the company to ‘take positions’ on the international market for cocoa, that reap huge profits for the company.

Most patriotic governments would ban such companies from their countries as doing harm to their exports (in the final analysis) if they could. But in the name of ‘liberalised trade’, and in order not to ruffle the feathers of potential aid donors, they tolerate them. I mean, Ghana will be dealing with Britain’s DFID on a regular basis, probably with Mr Mitchell still at the head of DFID, and what would be the attitude of Mr Mitchell to aid requests from Ghana if Ghana’s vice-president had told him to go and jump when he asked for intervention on behalf of Armajaro, ‘with immediate effect’?

So Ghana’s arm was twisted – terribly – to positively assist a hedge fund company, when the company’s agent had been caught with his hand in the till. It is beyond belief. And there are reports that the matter will be raised by concerned MPs, in the House of Commons. But don’t lose much sleep over it. It will be papered over in the same way Britain always protects its erring companies, the best example of such practices being the unceremonious manner in which former prime minister Tony Blair stopped the attempt by the British Serious Fraud Office to prosecute the arms company, BAE Systems, for setting up a ‘sleaze fund’ amounting to billions of dollars, for the private use of Saudi royals, in respect of an arms contract called ‘al-Yamamah’.

Poor Anas Aremeyaw Anas! Did he realise what he was getting into? All that dangerous investigative journalism – and its results thrown away at a dinner table in London! If he had been suspected whilst unravelling the smuggling enterprise, he could have been seriously harmed. And what would it have been in aid of? To prove the point that the independence of African countries is meaningless, so long as their arms can be twisted by foreign governments on behalf of their erring companies, and – ‘with immediate effect’, too on top?

Pambazuka News

Food aid imports, rains hurt agricultural investment in East Africa

by David Muwanga

High risky rains, unfair competition from food donations and lack of affordable finance have been identified as the major causes of failure by investors to inject money into the sector, according to a study carried out on the private sector agricultural investment in Eastern Africa.

The study funded by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) and supported by Uganda Investment Authority (UIA) is on the theme "What can make it happen?".

The report says investors are not interested in the agricultural sector due to the unstable markets mainly caused by government's interventions, political risks, poor roads and lack of skilled labour.

Other reasons given include tax benefits being easier in other sectors, the high cost of utilities especially electricity and corruption that were identified at the most most causes of low investment in agriculture in East Africa.

Moderate causes included poor implementation of policies, government intervention in markets especially for cereals, limited irrigation and poor infrastructure of roads and markets.

It says that on going FAO review work on Africa reveals alarming results showing that 218m people who constitute 30% of the continent's population experience chronic hunger and malnutrition.

Africa's total annual imports of agricultural products, of which 80?90% are food products, have grown in recent years from about $25billion to $33billion(b) while exports have remained at around $14 to15b annually.

The report says Africa consumes between 25-30% of global food aid in any normal given year. The Eastern Africa subregion alone which account's for less than 4% of the world's population consumes some 20% of the international food aid. The report reveals that in the year 2006, Eastern African countries of Burundi, Djibouti,

Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda required another 1.5m tonnes of food while their commercial imports totaled 4.9m tonnes.

An analysis by FAO reveals that the region has suffered a decline in self sufficiency ratio at 14% with Kenya the hardest hit at 27% decline and Tanzania at three percent decline.

The import dependency ratio increased three-fold, with Kenya again the hardest hit at 11-fold increase and Tanzania the least affected.

UIA executive director Prof. Maggie Kigozi said although the government has allocated budgetary funds to the agriculture sector that increased from 3.8% in 2006/7 to 4.5% in 2009/10 this is less than the at least 10% set by African governments.

"However Uganda's incentive package provides for capital recovery for those whose projects incorporate investments in plant and machinery," she noted.

She said the government has also signed double taxation agreements with several countries, adopted liberal foreign exchange policies and macro-economic discipline all that have created a conducive business climate.

"The sector however did not seem to be responding to government initiatives as its growth rate is less than 1% compared to the services sector which is at 15%," she said.

The report recommends investment opportunities exist in horticultural sub?sector production, with phenomenal export growth particularly in Kenya.

Investment opportunities exist in cereals and maize is a dominant staple food crop within all study countries.

Other mass commodities include oilseeds which have very high potential for development and much of Africa's significant production is exported as raw seed.

Others are diary products, and the ranching sub sector has been given least priority in the region.

There are few if established abattoirs and meat processing plants in study countries to make the subsector dynamic.

Africa offers room for substitution of unsustainable and unaffordable imports and to achieve displacement by local producers will require that they be competitive in price but also reliable on quality and quantity.

Other opportunities include the under?exploited land resources in Tanzania with expanses of under-utilized land.

Governments in the Eastern African Region are progressively adopting policies that would see greatly enhanced crop production.

A Land Act has just been adopted in Uganda though it remains controversial as it dowes not adequately address problems of land, while a Land Act draft has been tabled to the Parliament in Kenya and Tanzania has reformed socialist land policies of the past.

Businessweek

Scientists, donors blast Ethiopia's biosafety law as extreme, anti-biotechnology

by Peter Heinlein

Scientists and farmers are urging Ethiopia to reconsider a new biodiversity law they say restricts agricultural research and could hamper delivery of urgently needed food aid. The law has prompted foreign donors to cut off funding to Ethiopian scientific research institutions.

Ethiopia's government held a two day forum in early February to hear objections to a Biodiversity Proclamation approved by parliament last July, on the final day before summer recess. The law's stated objective is to protect biodiversity, as well as human health and animals, from 'the adverse effects of modified organisms.'

But critics say the proclamation chokes off research into improving crop production in a country suffering chronic food shortages. Tilaye Feyisa, assistant professor of plant biotechnology at Addis Ababa University says anyone involved in studying genetic engineering is subject to strict government regulation.

"It is an excellent proclamation to prevent research in plant genetic engineering," said Tilaye Feyisa. "If you break this proclamation, even unintentionally, you can be put in prison for one to three years."

Tilaye says funding for research on genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, has dried up since the law went into effect.

"The money we get is from outside sources," said Tilaye. "We write proposals, when the country is against GMOs, having this proclamation, we don't get any money for research from foreign donors. It is killing scientific research."

Tilahun Zewelde is a former plant scientist at the Ethiopian Research Organization. He now work at Uganda's Agriculture Biotechnology Support Program. Speaking at this week's meeting, he charged Ethiopia's law was written by environmental extremists and adopted without review by a parliament that had no idea of its consequences.

"We can't even teach students life science and biotechnology," said Tilahun Zewelde. "It was drafted by very biased people. They believe biotechnology is bad, genetic engineering is bad and multinationals are going to take over everything, control the seed business. And the actual technology users were not involved in the drafting process. So it's one sided, not good for the country."

Biotechnology experts from other African nations came to the forum to express concerns about the Biosafety Proclamation. Togolese scientist Jacob Mignouna is Technical Director of the African Agricultural Technology Foundation. He says the law rejects conclusive evidence about the safety of genetically modified organisms in common use.

"There's no need to reinvent the wheel," said Jacob Mignouna. "The world has moved on. This technology has been proven. This is the message our colleagues from Ethiopia should understand.We must look carefully and see how we can move forward to embrace new technology while at the same time protecting biodiversity."

But Minister of State for Agricultural Development Abera Deresa says Ethiopia is not convinced by available evidence that GMOs are safe. The Agriculture Ministry was a sponsor of the forum, but Abera says the government has a duty to protect the public until the scientific community does more to prove GMOs pose no threat to health or to Ethiopia's biodiversity.

"Among scientists there is a division," said Abera Deresa. "A certain number of scientists who are not for GMO, a certain number of scientists who are for GMO. So we have to assess why this is happening." He says the government is reviewing the Biosafety Proclamation, and may ask parliament to make changes.

Meanwhile, aid donors say the law could restrict shipments of food intended for more than five million Ethiopians facing malnutrition.

The United States provides nearly 80 per cent of Ethiopia's food assistance. Among the U.S. supplies currently on the way is roughly 30,000 metric tons of corn-soy blend and vegetable oil, which are typically produced from bioengineered corn and soy. The Ethiopian government has issued a waiver to allow the products to come in to the country, but the waiver is due to expire at the end of February.

VOA

EU gives 15.4 million euros for seed, fertilizer to Zimbabwean farmers

by Nelson Banya

The European Union is providing seed and fertiliser worth 15.4 million euros ($22.73 million) to small-scale Zimbabwean farmers to boost grain production, an EU diplomat said.

The EU, which maintains sanctions against Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe and his inner circle over charges of human rights abuses and electoral fraud, remains one of the country’s largest donors, giving more than 510 million euros since 2002.

Mugabe and long-term rival Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai formed a power-sharing government in February to try to end a political and economic crisis, largely blamed on Mugabe’s drive to seize land from whites to resettle landless blacks.

Once a breadbasket of the region, Zimbabwe’s farming sector has collapsed.

The head of the European Commission in Zimbabwe, Xavier Marchal, told a meeting of agricultural experts and donors assessing the preparations for the farming season that the EU facility was aimed at improving household food security.

“The EC, on behalf of the EU, has signed an agreement with FAO (the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation), which will provide 15.4 million euros to support self-reliance at smallholder farmer level in Zimbabwe,” Marchal said.

“This programme is part of a wider EC policy aiming at moving this country from food aid to food security.”

When food shortages were at their peak in 2008, aid organisations were feeding about 7 million Zimbabweans, more than half the population.

The EU facility is part of a $74 million fund created by donors, including the World Bank and Britain’s Department for International Development, to support up to 700,000 small-scale farmers. The donors’ project is expected to produce about 450,000 tonnes of the staple maize grain and meet a quarter of Zimbabwe’s annual requirements.

The government has forecast total maize output at up to 2.5 million tonnes, more than last year’s production, but farmers’ unions doubt the projection, citing input shortages and poor preparations.

Marchal said the EU would increase direct assistance to Zimbabwe once talks launched by Tsvangirai in Brussels in June were successfully concluded.

“But more importantly, government has to take its responsibilities. The decline in agricultural production is indeed related to issues relating to the way the land and agrarian reform programme has been conducted,” he said.

Reuters

UN to buy food aid from small scale farmers in Africa, Central America

More than 350,000 small-scale farmers in Africa and Central America will soon begin selling produce to the UN in an initiative that could transform the way food aid is purchased.

Announcing the five-year $76m (£41m) pilot project, the UN's World Food Programme said it would buy surplus crops from low-income farmers in 21 countries to help boost fragile economies. The food will be used for regional hunger emergencies and safety net schemes, such as school feeding projects.

While the WFP currently buys about 80% of its stocks locally in the developing world, virtually all of it comes from traders and large-scale farmers who can supply significant quantities of staples such as maize, sorghum and beans.

"The world's poor are reeling under the impact of high food and fuel prices, and buying food assistance from developing world farmers is the right solution at the right time," said Josette Sheeran, WFP executive director, who described the Purchase for Progress scheme as a "win-win."

"We help our beneficiaries who have little or no food and we help local farmers who have little or no access to markets where they can sell their crops."

Charitable foundations established by Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, and Howard Buffett, son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett, are funding the project, which targets some of the world's poorest countries, including Sierra Leone, Malawi, Ethiopia and El Salvador. It is expected that 40,000 metric tons of food - enough to feed to 250,000 people for a year - will be purchased from small-scale farmers in the first twelve months.

The farmers who sign up will be required to form into local collectives, and to set up a bank account in the group's name. The usual UN requirements for the growers to provide surety bonds, transport and packaging materials will be relaxed or waived.

By selling directly to the WFP rather than middlemen it is expected that the farmers will receive higher-than-normal prices. There are also plans to negotiate seasonal contracts with the smallholder collectives to give them additional security.

The announcement was made at the UN general assembly, where world leaders are discussing the progress made towards achieving the millennium development goals, whose targets include halving the 1990 poverty and hunger levels by 2015. Speaking at the launch, Bill Gates said that the new initiative "represents a major step toward sustainable change that could eventually benefit millions of poor rural households in sub-Saharan Africa and other regions".

The WFP, which bought $612m (£330m) of food supplies in the developing world last year to feed 86 million people, said that it will ensure that local markets are not distorted by only purchasing from farmers with surplus crops. In time, it is hoped that the farmers will also be connected to other local and regional markets.

The Guardian

Swaziland struggles to feed itself

What happens to a nation whose people depend on the largesse of international donor agencies for their existence, once support is withdrawn?

If forecasts for the small landlocked African nation of Swaziland are an indication, the granting of temporary relief may be followed by a new humanitarian emergency.

"The poverty solution we’ve heard about for so many years has been sustainable development: give people the tools they need to continue producing without outside assistance," said Titus Mahlalela, a food aid distributor working with the international NGO World Vision. World Vision distributes some of the food aid brought in by the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) to local communities; at present, this aid keeps a record 600,000 Swazis alive -- more than 60 percent of the population.

Mahlalela's view is that the International community is willing to help alleviate Immediate emergencies, but is less attracted to long-term commitments required for lasting solutions. An initiative of another UN agency, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), illustrates what happens when assistance that might help farmers achieve sustainable food production is prematurely withdrawn.

A rise in food production last year is likely to be reversed this year, FAO officials say, as farmers who received assistance have nowhere else to turn. Ploughing season is only weeks away.

"They gave me what I needed to farm last year. Seeds and fertiliser. We don’t know if we will receive these this year. I for one don’t know what I will do without these things," said Amos Nhlabela, a 45 year-old small farmer in Mlimba, a hamlet 50 km north of the central commercial hub Manzini.

Recent efforts to boost crop production were based not on achieving sustainability but were instead focused on alleviating crop losses due to drought. A false assumption was made: once rains returned, so would crop yields. In fact, lack of rainfall was only one obstacle to achieving sustained food production in Swaziland, where eight out of ten people depend on subsistence farming for survival.

For generations, Swazis accepted a cycle of bounty and famine that characterised traditional farming, which is dependent on sun and rain and manure from the oxen that plough the fields. When Swaziland gained its independence 40 years ago, it routinely recorded food surpluses because a population one third smaller than it is today did not consume as much from available land.

"Three things happened in the intervening decades," noted Carl Dlamini, an agriculture field officer in the central Manzini Region. "The population grew but there wasn’t enough farmland, so new generations moved onto marginal land that could barely produce.

"Secondly, climate change brought droughts that made formerly good land only marginally productive and marginal land completely incapable of producing crops. For the last 15 years much of the eastern Lubombo region has been droughty.

"The third factor cutting into agriculture production has been AIDS."

A concentrated and substantial amount of aid last year proved beneficial. In 2007, food production was down by 80 percent in some areas, and all parts of the country saw crop losses due to hot and dry weather. An emergency relief call from UN agencies brought a response that financed partial recovery.

WFP provided food aid, and the FAO funded purchases of farm inputs – seeds, fertilizer, tractors – required for individual farm production. A WFP/FAO crop assessment team found that agricultural output in 2008 agriculture output was twice 2007 levels, though still below that of the previous four years.

Ironically, the success of last year’s emergency relief resulted in the end of the government-declared national food emergency. Last year’s FAO budget of US $3 million has been slashed to $500,000.

For the coming planting season, which is imminent in some parts of the country as spring rains begin falling, only one out of six farmers who received inputs from FAO last year will receive them this year. The impoverished country’s treasury has no funds to make up the shortfall.

"We had a good response to the donor appeal last year. But the drought emergency is over," said Tamie Dlamini, Programme Director of FAO’s Swaziland operations. "We will have another shortfall in food production this year, not from drought but from farmers not planting because they cannot afford inputs."

Less than 60 percent of Swaziland's arable land is under cultivation, partly due to AIDS decimating the agricultural work force. This year, input costs will be another important limit on agricultural production. Fertiliser costs are expected to be up 200 percent over last year come the height of the planting season in November.

Rising fuel prices are reflected in the higher cost of private tractor rental. The Ministry of Agriculture has too few tractors, and waits have caused some farmers to plant late.

"I cannot afford fertiliser. I cannot afford seeds. I cannot afford to rent a tractor. I can borrow my cousin’s oxen to plough, but he also has no seeds or fertiliser," said another farmer, Sonny Dube, Amos Nhlabela’s neighbour.

"Why is money available for emergency relief, but not for making farming affordable? Why are there too few tractors? Where is the funding for a self-replenishing seed bank that farmers can draw from?" asked Connie Hlope, one of the few women agricultural field officers in the country. Her job is to advise farmers on planting schedules and tractor hire.

"You hear why farming hasn’t been ‘sustainable.’ People blame donor dependency. You hear that people refuse to plough because they get food from the WFP. But I’ve never been able to substantiate that. It’s a myth," Hlope said.

An interview with a rural resident confirmed this. Amanda Mavuso, a widow and mother of five who manages to cultivate a two-acre field in central Swaziland said, "The food we grow is good. We enjoy it. The food from overseas is not quite right. It tastes different. No one around here prefers donor food."

If she and her family do end up accepting donor food, it will be because she is unable to do the work of running a farm by herself. She has no money for inputs and depends on the assistance of neighbouring families to do the hard tasks of ploughing, weeding and harvesting.

Until programmes are devised to meet the fundamental needs of small-scale agriculture that feed a majority of Swazis and which once produced a national surplus of agricultural production, "sustainability" will remain more of a developmental cliché than an achievable reality in the lives of small farmers.

IPS

UN cuts relief food imports from US, benefiting Ugandan farmers

The rise in the cost of food has devastated consumers from the cities of North America to the tiny villages of Africa. But for many of Uganda's farmers, higher food prices have been the best thing to happen to them in years.

Since last year, the Ugandan arm of the world's top food aid agency, the UN World Food Programme (WFP), has cut its imports from America and bought more than 60 percent of its food aid locally, boosting the market and income of rural farmers.

The primary reason? Higher global food prices.

"The WFP saved the farmers," says Paul Masaba, a farmer who grows maize, potatoes, wheat and coffee in Kapchorwa, a small, dusty town nestled at the foot of western Uganda's Mount Elgon. "We now have a ready-made market at a fair price."

The WFP still imports maize from American farms for its relief efforts in Africa, but the increased cost of transporting the food added with rising food prices has made the idea of buying African food more alluring.

Masaba says that he expects to sell 300 bags of maize to the WFP this season, netting upwards of one million Ugandan shillings (700 dollars). Before joining the Kapchorwa Commercial Farmers' Association and entering into the WFP contract, Masaba says, he was "working at a loss" due to a lack of capital, low productivity and a non-existent market.

Because there were no thriving markets or set prices, "middlemen" or businessmen who would buy crops at a low price then resell them to exporters for a large profit, would exploit the farmers, Ugandans say.

Grace Cheberen says she was one of the oft-exploited growers. "We at least now have a fair price for our maize, which has opened our market," she says. "Before, our maize did not have a price."
Local consumers would pay the farmers what they could afford, sometimes at half the value of the produce.

"I feel happy that my produce is being appreciated and that I am able to pay for my children's school fees," Cheberen says, pointing past lumbering banana trees to a half-finished building that will become her office and store. She earned three million shillings (2,100 dollars) from her contract last year.

Lydia Wamala, spokeswoman for the WFP's Uganda office, said that the UN agency has always tried to buy around half of its food on the continent, but the percentage increased to 65 percent last year. "It's becoming more and more of a trend to buy food from African growers instead of importing from abroad," Wamala said.

Indeed, the WFP saw the food price crisis as a "good opportunity" to increase the income of local farmers, the agency said. The WFP added that it plans to partner with the US-based Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to increase its buying from small-scale farmer groups in Africa.

But the boom in Ugandan farmers' incomes may only be temporary. With higher food prices also come higher prices for farming inputs, such as fertilizer, seeds and fuel.

Vice-chairperson of the Kapchorwa Commercial Farmers' Association, Joyce Banan, says the WFP price is really "not enough for the farmers."

Still, the farmers say the contract has motivated them to better organise and bargain for prices within their own local markets. Through the farmers' association, the growers competitively sell a myriad of produce to Ugandan consumers.

"Farmers were just barely surviving before, that's why they have remained poor," Banan says. "But I can talk now, and say this is the price I want for my maize."

AFP

Sudan lives on handouts but exports food

Even as it receives a billion pounds of free food from international donors, Sudan is growing and selling vast quantities of its own crops to other countries, capitalizing on high global food prices at a time when millions of people in its war-stricken region of Darfur barely have enough to eat.

In the bone-dry desert, where desiccated donkey carcasses line the road, huge green fields suddenly materialize: beans, wheat, sorghum, melons, peanuts, pumpkins, eggplant. It is all grown here, part of an ambitious government plan for Sudanese self-sufficiency, creating giant mechanized farms that rise out of the sand like mirages.

But how much of this bonanza is getting back to the hungry Sudanese, like the 2.5 million people driven into camps in Darfur? And why is a country that exports so many of its own crops receiving more free food than anywhere else in the world, especially when the Sudanese government is blamed for creating the crisis in the first place?

African countries that rely on donated food usually cannot produce enough on their own. Somalia, Ethiopia, Niger and Zimbabwe are all recent examples of how war, natural disasters or gross mismanagement can cut deep into food production, pushing millions of people to the brink of starvation.

But here in Sudan, there seem to be plenty of calories to go around. The country is already growing wheat for Saudi Arabia, sorghum for camels in the United Arab Emirates and vine-ripened tomatoes for the Jordanian army. Now the government is plowing $5 billion into new agribusiness projects, many of them to produce food for export.

Take sorghum, a staple of the Sudanese diet, typically eaten in flat, spongy bread. Last year, the U.S. government, as part of its response to the emergency in Darfur, shipped in 283,000 tons of sorghum, at high cost, from as far away as Houston. Oddly enough, that is about the same amount that Sudan exported, according to UN officials. This year, Sudanese companies, including many that are linked to the government in Khartoum, are on track to ship out twice that amount, even as the United Nations is being forced to cut rations to Darfur.

Eric Reeves, a professor at Smith College in the United States and an outspoken activist who has written frequently on the Darfur crisis, called this anomaly "one of the least reported and most scandalous features of the Khartoum regime's domestic policies." It was emblematic, he said, of the Sudanese government's strategy to manipulate "national wealth and power to further enrich itself and its cronies, while the marginalized regions of the country suffer from terrible poverty."
Aid groups gave up long ago on the Sudanese government helping the people of Darfur. After all, the nation's president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, has been accused of masterminding genocide there. UN officials have said that if they do not bring food into the region, the government surely will not.

That leaves the United Nations and Western aid groups feeding more than 3 million residents of Darfur. But the lifeline is fraying. Security is deteriorating. Aid trucks are getting hijacked nearly every day and deliveries are being made less and less frequently. The result: less food and soaring malnutrition rates, particularly among children.

On top of this is the broader problem of trying to find affordable grains on the world market when prices are higher than they have been in decades. UN officials in Sudan say that the fact that they have to import some of the same commodities that Sudan not only produces but exports is a source of constant frustration.

"Sudan could be self-sufficient," said Kenro Oshidari, the director of the UN World Food Program in Sudan. "It does have the potential to be the breadbasket of Africa."

Sudanese officials say that is precisely their goal, and they deny that Sudanese agribusiness is being built at the expense of their own people. They reject accusations that they are neglecting far-flung areas like Darfur, much less waging a war of hunger and deprivation against them.
Instead, Sudanese officials say they are simply trying to build up their economy. They say they know what it is like to be vilified, having been squeezed by U.S. sanctions for more than a decade. And it could get worse, with Bashir facing genocide charges at the International Criminal Court in connection with the massacres in Darfur.

"Sanctions are never far from our mind," said Al-Amin Dafa Allah, chairman of the National Assembly's agricultural committee. "We're trying to minimize our reliance on the outside."

In fact, part of the reason relief agencies bring their own food into Sudan stems from the U.S. policy of giving crops, not money, as foreign aid. Many European countries, by contrast, just give the World Food Program cash, which can be used to buy food locally. Last year, the program bought 117,000 tons of Sudanese sorghum. UN officials said they would like to buy more, but Sudanese suppliers could make more money with exports. "We don't get discounts," said Emilia Casella, a spokeswoman for the World Food Program.

Sudanese officials say they want to sell more crops to the United Nations, but lost in this discussion about buying and selling food is whether the Sudanese government should be donating food to its own needy people.

For now, Sudanese officials seem more interested in doing business with their new partners in the Middle East. Sudan is the largest country in Africa, nearly 2.5 million square kilometers, or a million square miles. It has 84 million hectares, about 210 million acres, of arable land, with less than a quarter being cultivated. The Sudanese government is striking deals left and right with Arab countries just across the Red Sea: the Arab countries bring the money, the soil scientists and the $200,000 tractors. Sudan supplies the land.

"Our country is small and dry and mountainous," said Man Shuqwara, the Jordanian director of a Jordanian-run farm in northern Sudan that grows wheat, beans, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, oranges and bananas. "By logic we would come to Sudan."

That same logic is attracting big money from Saudi Arabia. About an hour's drive north of the Jordanian farm, near the town of Ed Damer, is a huge new $200 million project to grow wheat in what now looks like a 15-kilometer-wide sandbox. Some of the wheat will stay in Sudan; some will be shipped to Saudi Arabia. A fleet of new John Deere tractors is already lined up for harvest time. A worker on the farm whispered that the tractors had been sneaked into Sudan through Saudi Arabia because of the American trade sanctions.

Sudan's overall economic strategy is to diversify from oil, which it began exporting in 1999, and to focus more closely on the traditional engine of the country's economy - agriculture. More than 80 percent of the work force is engaged in raising animals or farming of one sort or another.
"Our sesame oil is the best in the world," said Al-Amin, the agriculture committee chairman. "And it's organic!"

The dark side to all this development is displacement. The conflict in Darfur is largely about grazing rights and watering holes - and the government's brutal counterinsurgency policies in response to an armed rebellion.

And development in Sudan often means uprooting other rural subsistence farmers for large-scale commercial projects, said Alex de Waal, a Sudan scholar at the Social Science Research Council in New York. "Smallholder food production goes down, commercial food production goes up, and food relief serves as a subsidy to this transformation, keeping the displaced alive," he said.

The Sudanese government is blamed for running many of the displaced people in Darfur off their farms, making them reliant on handouts. Still, the government has been slow to feed them.
The last time the government gave the World Food Program any food for Darfur was in 2006. It was 22,000 tons of Sudanese-grown sorghum, a fraction of what the people needed, UN officials said, and some of the grain was rancid and infested with weevils.

Bor Globe