AP: Federal regulators launch probe of big agriculture
The Associated Press recently reported that the first joint workshops on agriculture by regulators at the U.S. Justice and Agriculture Departments was expected to give farmers, lobbyists, executives and academics a strong indication of where the Obama administration stands on consolidation in agriculture. The administration’s biggest concern has been the concentration of power in rural America. According to the story, farmers felt it was the most attention paid in years to their long-standing complaints that big corporations are choking out smaller players while industry officials and farming groups saw the move as a possible step toward legal action.

The New Vision: Fruit farmers to reap from Coca-Cola, Gates project
A new partnership between Coca-Cola, TechnoServe and the Gates Foundation hopes to enable farmers increase their productivity and double their incomes by 2014. The project is aimed at creating market opportunities for local farmers whose fruit will be used in Coca-Cola’s locally-produced fruit juices, a representative from the company told The New Vision, a Ugandan news Web site. Many multinational corporations import fruit juice concentrate into the country because of the perceived lack of local fruit supply, according to the article. But this partnership could create an attractive long-term opportunity for farmers since there is now a compelling market need for domestically produced mango and passion fruit.

Africa is a Country: Playground Politics
Kids have the unique ability to take the most complex ideas and break them down into the most simple terms. Take, for example, this Funny or Die clip posted on one of the blogs we follow, Africa is a Country, in which children bring satire to an interpretation of the reasons behind the food crisis in sub-Saharan Africa.

Hunger looms as biofuels take root in Uganda–Ugandan farmers are seeing the effects of growing food for fuel.  Jatropha, a plant with non-edible seeds that are made into biofuels has become popular in various parts of the country.  Because farmers see more potential for profit with biofuel crops many have stopped or reduced food crop production in favor of growing this tree.  Geofrey Kamese, the program officer for energy and climate change at the National Association of Professional Environmentalists (NAPE), a local NGO, believes that biofuel production will more likely increase food shortages and promote poverty.  And while biofuel promoters and experts disagree on the subject, food security of the country is the main focus for organizations like the World Food Program—whose Ugandan representatives caution against unstructured policy for growing biofuels.

Nigeria annually spends $700 million to import rice from Thailand according to www.africa-agriculture.com. Prasit Damrongshitama, CEO of Chareon Pokphand reported that Nigeria imports one million tons of rice from Thailand every year.  As “good economic growth and friendly investment climate” bolstered a decision to look into more investment opportunities, his company is now looking to grow rice and maize in Nigeria.  So far agricultural entrepreneurs in Nigeria have been open to the Thai company’s plan and expect positive changes as a result.

- ARP Staff

New York Times: Threats Lead Food Agency to Curtail Aid in Somalia
The World Food Program announced Tuesday that it was suspending food aid to one million people in southern Somalia after receiving several threats and demands to pay a “security fee” to the Shabab, an Islamic extremist group.  Peter Smerdon, a spokesman for the program, said that the demands had been followed by a rise in intimidation, threats and harassment.  The Shabab pressed a demand that the agency not import food during the harvest season in order to encourage the development of local agriculture. Several previous Shabab statements accused the agency of undermining local agriculture, as well as importing poor quality food.  Smerdon said the agency tried to negotiate with the Shabab and community elders but ultimately made the decision to close several distribution centers.  The suspension is indefinite and will affect about a third of the 2.8 million people that the program anticipated feeding in January.

Farming Matters Magazine: What Is The Future of Family Farming
A debate between Rudy Rabbinge and Fabio Kessler Dal Soglio ensues about whether family farming can essentially compete with large-scale agriculture and feed the growing world population.  For Rabbinge “family farming should not be romanticised. Weeding and ploughing for a meagre crop is not romantic, but pure poverty.  Supporting existing structures and romanticising the poor life of farmers in fact consolidates poverty.”  He says that farmers’ children will move to cities to find other relevant work and farmers will therefore need to increase the scale of their farming.  Dal Soglio says “in general, technologies generated by family farmers are better suited to the local socio-economic and ecological conditions, and therefore are appropriate for sustainable development.”  He believes that family farming technologies adopted have essentially ensured the world’s food supply.

— ARP Staff

African Arguments: Three Problems with the 60 Minutes Story on Congo Gold
This is a really interesting posting from the UC Berkeley doctoral student Dan Fahey, who writes that a recent 60 Minutes piece on conflict over gold in the Democratic Republic of Congo promoted false notions about the root causes of the conflict. He said high-profile media coverage, like that provided by a program like 60 Minutes, can play a powerful role in educating people about how consumer habits are connected to wars in other countries. But when the story poses misinformed questions, he said, it could lead to misguided policies to try to address the root causes of the war.

Global Food for Thought: The Post-Copenhagen Agenda for Agricultural Science
The highly-anticipated global climate change conference in Copenhagen is wrapping up this week. In response to the conference, the Global Agricultural Development Initiative solicited commentary from leading agricultural experts analyzing Cop15’s proceedings. One analysis comes from Stanford professor David Lobell, who talks about how the climate talks are sparking a huge interest in mitigation (undoing carbon emissions) and adaptation (making due in a changed world) efforts. But he also warns that in order for those efforts to be fruitful more needs to be done to define the potential benefits and costs of investing in agriculture.

The Independent: Organic farming ‘could feed Africa’
A new study recently released by the United Nations suggested that organic farming practices are delivering sharp increases in yields, improvements in the soil and a boost in the income of Africa’s smallholder farmers who remain among the poorest in the world. The study found that organic practices outperformed traditional methods and chemically intensive farming. It also found that organic farming produces strong environmental benefits such as improved soil fertility, better retention of water and resistance to drought.

— ARP Staff

Africa Reporting Project correspondent Madeleine Bair published a story this week in the East Bay Express about economist Ted Miguel’s research on climate change and civil conflict in Africa. The study, produced by Miguel and a UC Berkeley doctoral student, is the first to link global warming to human warfare.

As a reporter my job is to take complicated issues and frame them so that they make sense to the average person—or so I thought. But by the end of this World Summit on Food Security, I too am confused about this behemoth of an issue. I’ve collected all the papers. I’ve read the documents. I’ve listened to the statements made by delegates from various countries. And I still wonder: has anything come from this summit, funded by the Saudis for $2.5 million.

I am unsure how to appease the reader when it comes to the huge multi-faceted issue at the end of a summit that essentially has not reached a solution.

Jacques Diouf, director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, said that he “believes that we have agreed on important things.” And although he concedes that a summit cannot solve the problems, but only actions of the leaders who have made promises can do that, he said that some progress has been made.

I think about this as I reflect on this experience. During a short break between the conclusion of the summit and Diouf’s press conference I went to lunch across the street with some colleagues. We settled at an outside table of a nice restaurant with mid-range prices; about seven euros for a margherita pizza. After a miscommunication about a plate of tortellini ensued my colleagues and I left only paying for what we thought was fair, leaving a cold plate of tortellini on the table—almost completely untouched. I ordered tortellini with cream sauce, as described and pictured on the menu not expecting it to have small pieces of ham sprinkled on top. I don’t eat ham for religious reasons, and asked that the food be taken back.

I couldn’t even begin to figure out the value of that plate of tortellini in the larger scheme of food and agriculture, but I know I felt guilty as I replayed in my head the words of African visitors attending the summit. Most of them were from NGOs in developing countries, hoping for the chance to be heard by UN leaders regarding the lack of access to food in their countries. Here I was leaving food on a table, because of a religious restriction nonetheless, but interviewing people who have seen famine and drought in their homes.

Particularly I thought about Aichatori Sami from Niger. I met her at the Food Sovereignty Forum’s events on the first day of the summit. In a park across the street from the FAO building, surrounded by police officers, she gathered with other NGO leaders to discuss what absolutely needs to be done to end hunger. She spoke softly, with no malice in her voice.

“I am with the regional Peasants Platform from Niger and we are part of La Via Campesina, which is an umbrella organization,” she said. “We are very proud to come to this forum. We have great hope that our governments may be able to insist, and to press upon FAO so that they can really implement the concept of food sovereignty—which to me means being able to be fed, to eat as much as you need to. And when I say eat I mean good quality food.

“As I see it, during the last years, efforts for food security are still too weak. There has been a decline in the percentage of food aid to developing countries. I think that our governments should stand up and pressure the people at UNICEF, FAO and other institutions so that they really do the things discussed here this week.”

At the press conference most reporters touched on similar subjects. This summit failed, these talks led to nothing. The sentiment was skepticism. After previous meetings like this, nothing has happened. So people like Sami, and reporters, are understandably wary of believing that anything will change this time. If effective fights against hunger failed to materialize from previous events like this why should we believe. As of right now the summit has just ended. And whether or not promises will be kept is to be seen. And it is the hope of people like Aichatori Sami that this summit won’t be added to the list of examples of failed talks. And as human being with a heart, and a reporter who sees the passion of both sides—the intent of the UN leaders and doubt of the hungry people—it’s my hope as well.

ROME — The Food and Agriculture Organization building was humming with low-level, languid activity Sunday afternoon, as journalists and FAO officials prepared for Monday’s launch of the World Food Summit on Food Security.

Journalists speaking a myriad of languages checked e-mail, made phone calls, joked and lounged around the blue-carpeted media room, awaiting the event and the resulting news coverage blitz. The conference, which will begin with an address by Pope Benedict XVI, stretches over the next three days.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon and FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf are also on the speaker line-up. Over 60 heads of state are expected to attend.

“You see this? Remember this,” FAO employee Maria Folch said, waving her arm at the relaxed journalists, the barely half-filled room. “It won’t look like this tomorrow.”

A connected event, the First Ladies Summit on Food Security and Women’s Access to Resources commenced today, but media were not allowed into the closed afternoon session.

Suzanne Mubarak, the first lady of Egypt, is presiding over this summit. (Full name: ‘The Second First Ladies Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement on Food Security and Women’s Access to Resources.’)

Their concept paper affirms that the primary victims of the food crisis are female-headed households and the urban poor. “Women produce 60-80 percent of the food in most of the developing countries,” it states. Some factors restricting women’s relationship to food production: lack of access to land, financial credit, education, training and research and technology.

Their suggestions? More direct investments in projects aimed at helping rural women and more emphasis on gender equality, among other things.

Despite the quiet pre-conference mood, the confusion that ensues when several international heads of state, NGOs and one pope converge on a single building was in full force.

The closest metro station (Circo Massimo) was locked down, streets were blocked off and police and security clumped together in small groups along Viale delle Terme di Caracalla.

This journalist was mistakenly ushered in through the main doors (frantic calls of ‘Signiora…Signiora!’ finally halted my wayward journey) and I was eventually sent back to the media entrance, a half-block away, next to some dumpsters and a petrol station.

Well-dressed international delegates wandered near the stately silver FAO building on the same street, enjoying the mild weather. None paid much attention to the remains of the historic Roman Circus Maximus, which served as an astonishing backdrop to the low-key bustle and pomp.

Right now, there’s little to do but wait. Tomorrow, it will be a different story.

Software and web-search giant Google last week launched the online Google Trader pilot in Uganda to connect sellers and buyers of goods and services, including in agriculture.

Google Trader online is part of the SMS-based services that the company launched in June in Uganda. The service is aimed at bringing together buyers and sellers of products or services in a “marketplace” using their mobile phones.

Rachel Payne, the manager of Google Uganda, said in a post that Google Trader is a marketplace on the Web for people to search for and trade products and services including agricultural products, cars, jobs, services, electronics or real estate.

SMS helping farmers?

The company launched the Google SMS in partnership with GRAMEEN, MTN and BROSDI, with a promise to provide farmers with the relevant information the farmers need to improve farming and thus get out of poverty.

I’m one of the people who expressed initial doubt over the effectiveness of the Google SMS, not just because most Ugandan farmers cannot read or write (if they have the money to get SMS), but because of the absence of really dependable data and information to answer the wide range of farmers’ queries if they send an SMS to Google.

I have always been concerned about the little attention paid to generation of reliable content which new technologies are targeted to provide to users. Google SMS, though initially free is meant to be paid for by users (subsistence farmers). For me, it would be exploitative to ask farmers to pay to access information they need if you cannot reliably provide the information they need (instead giving them what you have).

It is expected that the online Google Trader is a better platform since it is “free” for those who can freely connect to the internet. But few subsistence farmers in Uganda have that free internet access. The fact that there are 49 online posts for agriculture goods and services over the past two months may concern some people .

That is why, while the online Google Trader offers multiple items at once, and enables users to include photos and more detailed information about the products or services they’re selling or interested in buying, it might also fall short of breaking the barriers (unless more comes from their tech kitchen) that have limited their SMS service from being a real mass information service and a significant contributor to development, especially in agriculture.

While Google should be hailed for extending their important services to Uganda and Africa, the company can do better if it finds ways to ensure their technologies benefit the low income people as well. A local farmer who sends an SMS to Google Trader should get real value for the money invested in the SMS, or the time to go to an internet café.

Google can work with like-minded initiatives like Question Box, Grameen, Yo Uganda and other local software developers to deliver this market (Google Trader) to the majority of Ugandan farmers. Question Box, though in its initial stages has shown that most farmers can be reached through technological devices that allows them to ask and get answered through voice, and for free or less cost through question boxes or toll free call centers that collect, package and process information for different farmers from online sources, their database and experts on call.

In addition, Google can think of working with companies that make mobile phones and those providing telecommunication services to enable voice enabled information request and delivery in languages that farmers in a given area most understand. With Google Translator already doing fairly well for the written word, the world will benefit from work on possibilities of translating voice (audio) if we are to effectively communicate with farmers in Africa.

But content generation and proper archiving is a prerequisite. Google can work with organizations engaged in agriculture to document farmers’ contacts, the crops grown, harvest, prices, specific seed or crop buyers and in what market(s) they operate and uptodate market prices. It is then that we can look forward to a day when a small holder farmer or local trader can SMS to Google’s online database or call in and get the information that is relevant to his or her current need.

Links to related articles

Google Trader Gets A Web-Based Companion In Uganda

Google Trader Extends Service to Web Users

You can also read Gerald Businge’s information and communication blog at www.timelyreflection.com